Beauty in the Ruins
by LanaDrama
Summary: Hermione sets out to explore her submissive side with Lucius. As she discovers this new part of herself, she also unearths the deep secrets of Lucius Malfoy's heart, which may pose more danger to her than she expects. BDSM romance. Lucius/Hermione. Adult readers only, please.
1. Chapter 1

**I didn't want to wait longer to post this since I've been receiving so many messages about this sequel, so here it is! All from Hermione's first person POV. All rights and characters, as usual, belong to JK Rowling.**

 **Thank you everyone who read Valentine Surprise and its shorter one-shots and encouraged me with this story, especially FoxLittleRedFox and ellabelle12 - this one's for you :)**

 **Let me know what you think. Hugs,**

 **Lana**

* * *

My attraction to Lucius Malfoy was never purely emotional. It was a function of physics; a torturing trick of his magnetic field. It was visceral - almost like toxic metal. I felt the first tincture of this insidious venom the day I Disapparated from his home after our first sexual encounter. Since that day, thoughts of him invade me at random. It never matters what I'm doing or what my surroundings are, Lucius Malfoy always finds a way in. It's not at all fair. But then... it was never meant to be that. Perhaps it was the same for him. Or perhaps not. He, at least, was at liberty to control his thoughts; I had no such luxury. Over time, missing him evolved into a linear function; the longer he stayed away, the more acutely I felt his absence. Missing him became its own subtle and stinging torture. But that's what made his homecomings so special. When he was with me, the loneliness was numbed away. Mr. Malfoy was my whole world that year; my life revolved around his schedule, and it was how I preferred it. Our Italian adventure was full of sunshine and storms, but I loved every moment of it. My only regret was that... no, no, no. I refuse to have regrets. The whole of the experience was what made me who I am today, and I would not wish it to be anything other than what it was. And it was ... magnificent, just like Lucius himself.

I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on Casa Valentina. It was almost like a relic from the past, and so opulent as to drop jaws of even the most jaded Roman emperors. White crimean granite in Neo-Renaissance style greeted me in all its glory as we arrived at the top of the Hill of Parioli.

Lucius glanced wryly in my direction. "Breathe, Miss Granger."

A petite, pregnant witch waved at us from the patio. I recognized her from Draco's wedding announcement as Astoria Greengrass.

"Welcome to Rome," she called out to us, resting her hand on her full belly.

Lucius turned to me again. His voice, dark and dulcet, spoke in my ear, "Astoria will give you a tour and help get you settled in," he announced abruptly. "I have some urgent business at the Embassy that cannot be postponed."

I tried to hide my shock. By no means did I expect this to be a romantic getaway; I knew what our arrangement entailed. He explained it so succinctly the night of our Valentine's Day dinner, and yet half of me felt abandoned ... dismissed ... demoted to the periphery of his world.

The other half of me was relieved. After our flight, I knew I needed a little time to recover, and to at least begin to get my bearings in the house and in the city. The whole whirlwind ordeal with Lucius had come over me like an unremitting fever dream.

Astoria entrusted our trunks to a house-elf, then turned to me with a friendly smile. "Would you prefer to have your lunch in the parlor or in the dinning salon?"

"I'm not really hungry. I thought I'd just settle in and look around." I groped in my pocket for a wand, but instead found a piece of paper.

 _You're under strict orders to relax._

 _LM_

"No skipping meals on my watch." Her serious expression broke into another easy smile. "It makes me look like a glutton, despite that I'm actually eating for two and all. Mr. Malfoy wants me to make sure that your first day here is as relaxing as possible."

"Oh. Then in the salon is fine, I suppose," I answered aloud.

It surprised me how easily I acquiesced at the mere mentioning of him. His name alone, apparently, was enough to overthrow men as if its invocation were linked to that same imperious spell he always seemed to cast over me in his presence.

I followed Astoria through the double doors to the dining room. From the ceiling hung a grand chandelier that surely would blind me if it were lit up. The table was dressed with blue linen, and set with silver and white china for just one. Though by my cursory count, it might have sat twenty with elbow room to spare.

A rumble in my stomach interrupted my present thoughts. I'm not sure I knew how hungry I was until the house-elf set the food in front of me. I was ravenous, even in spite of our elaborate dinner the night before. Refraining from acting like Ron, I selected a croissant with raspberry jam.

The tea was perfect, the croissant buttery and soft. I took another nibble. Through three arched windows on the far wall, I watched the sunlight waltz erratically in the bubbling waters of the fountain in the courtyard. And for just a moment, I caught myself seduced by the quiet opulence of my captivity. I imagined Lucius's first wife — seated in her fancy dress robes on the far side of the table, languidly lifting a grape to her painted lips. I suppose she probably thought quite little of luxuries afforded her at Casa Valentina.

Aware of Astoria's curious gaze upon me, I blushed and finished up as quickly as I could. I was neither Lucius's wife, nor his maîtresse-en-titre. Clearing my throat, I attempted to make polite conversation with Astoria. I answered her questions and asked about her life in Rome in return. I learned that she studied art history here before she started dating Draco. She glowed in her pregnancy - the classic embodiment of Renaissance beauty. A twinge of envy shot through me. I could never aspire to have that with Lucius. This Malfoy wasn't going to fall in love with me among the ancient ruins and start a family with me.

"Why is the villa called Casa Valentina?" I inquired after Astoria have related all she could about her life.

"It used to belong to Countess Isabella Valentina two hundred years ago," the younger witch said with a sly smile, her eyes alight. "She was the most gifted witch of her time, but she was really more famous for her marriage to the Italian Minister of Finance. Now her ghost is famous for haunting the upstairs gallery."

"Haunting it?"

"Her marriage had a tragic end, not too different from that of my in-laws." She paused, then added in afterthought, "Except for the obvious."

I leaned in, eager for more information. Lucius had never discussed anything but barest of details of why his marriage ended. I hardly knew anything about his personal life before me. That didn't stop me from following him to a foreign country.

"Which is?" I prompted Astoria for elaboration.

"Isabella caught her husband in bed with two courtesans. She stabbed him through the throat with the only weapon she had on her - her Chinese hairpin."

A chill ran through me. "She killed him?"

"Oh, yes." Astoria's head bopped with approval. "If you ask me, the cheating bastard deserved it. Like I told Draco before we married, infidelity is the most unforgivable sin in a marriage for me. Everything else can be worked out, but not the ultimate betrayal."

"That's a grim story," I said.

Her big emerald eyes danced in amusement. "I can see you're skeptical. That's okay. Mr. Malfoy doesn't believe it either, no matter how many incidents I've witnessed that point to the contrary. She's invisible, so the visual proof cannot easily exist. We live in the house across the courtyard and I've been looking after this one long enough to know a haunting when I experience it."

Astoria must have sensed my uneasiness with her tale, for she changed the subject abruptly and asked if I'd like a tour of the house. I did my best to decline without offending her. I needed some time to myself — to be alone, to think. Have I utterly lost my mind by agreeing to come here?

She nodded politely, giving me a quick verbal floor plan and told me how to summon her if I needed anything. She informed me she'd serve tea at five in the salon as well and that in the evening, she reminded me solemnly, I would be dining with Lucius.

I thanked her politely and walked off to the library. At last, I was alone again. I sat for a while on the window pane, staring out.

It didn't seem fair to me. There I was, right where Lucius Malfoy wanted me, a willing captive in his house, and yet I'd have to wait until the evening to see him. At that very moment, he was out there somewhere in the city, probably in the midst of some important meeting. I closed my eyes, picturing us as Ingres' _Jupiter and Thetis_ ; the high Olympian impervious to the little nymph's pathetic supplications. Perhaps he'd think of me throughout the day. Perhaps he wouldn't.

In the weeks that were to follow, I would spend much of the time he was gone simply wondering when he would return. At its worst, I would ruminate and pine … and pace the floor. I couldn't help it. My surroundings, my work, my entire daily existence hinged upon him. I never once dreaded his homecomings. I looked forward to them, because no matter what new and ingenious torments might await me in his arms, he was home. He was with me. And he was mine.

That first day I was too emotional. I sat by the window and cried a little, then got myself lost for a while. I wandered wraith-like amid the 116 rooms and various corridors, taking in the obscene array of paintings that comprised Lucius's collection. His possessions were far more precious than I'd realized at first glance. I was stunned. What I found on his walls rivaled most museums, and half a dozen times at least, I stopped cold before something that I would have sworn on my soul he'd stolen from the Hermitage, the Louvre, Uffizi, or the Vatican.

At the far end of the gallery, I found lacquered double doors. I grasped the twin handles, but paused before turning them. A shuffling noise came from inside. It sounded like footsteps.

It had to be wrong. It was probably nothing but my imagination. Better off worrying about devils I knew than the ones Lucius kept locked away. Whether it was in my head or not, I needed to get away from this room. Fast.

As my feet carried me all the way back to the foyer, I couldn't help but glance over my shoulder. More than likely, I had it all wrong. Be that as it may, I still wanted nothing more at that moment than to put a healthy distance between myself, and whatever the hell was hidden behind that door.

Downstairs, I promptly bumped into Astoria, who returned to fetch me to tea.

"You know so much about this house, Astoria," I complimented her, unsure of how to begin asking what

She nodded proudly. "All there is."

"Then maybe you could answer some questions for me. For instance, why only one of the rooms is locked, while other doors have anti-locking charms on them?" It was an observation I've made through my solitary tour, but one that paled in comparison to the artwork that surrounded me.

Astoria didn't respond right away. I watched her face darken slightly.

"It's a sad story," she lifted the tea pot and poured another cup. "Mr. Malfoy did that years ago."

"But why?"

"How much do you know about Mr. Malfoy's ex-wife and their divorce?" she asked me with slight apprehension in her voice.

"Other than being divorced, he didn't tell me much," I admitted. "He didn't tell me anything about his marriage at all."

"So you don't know that she was prone to fits."

I felt my eyebrows raise up. "Like seizures?"

She wrinkled her nose. "If only. No. It was manias. She had fits of jealousy and paranoia. It was terrible Poor lady couldn't help it; she was very unwell by the time Mr. Malfoy was first appointed here after the war." She paused for dramatic effect. Astoria Malfoy was clearly a well-practiced raconteuse. "One night she had a horrid row with Mr. Malfoy. Furniture was destroyed. Venetian crystal smashed to bits. Mr. Malfoy finally announced that he wanted to file for divorce. When he left the house the next day, she locked herself in her room tried to commit suicide. Draco would never tell me how, but apparently his father discovered her just in time. Now no one will be able to lock themselves in, even by magical means, ever again."

A chill much colder and ominous than the last shook my body. "She tried to kill herself?" I lamely croaked out.

Astoria enthusiastically continued on, "I don't know if it was intentional. Draco said she told him it was an accident, but not even the Healers believed her. Shortly after she returned she had another episode and ... she had to be institutionalized. She's still in an asylum to this day. So yes, the only room that lacks anti-locking charm is his."

Silence settled between us. I didn't know what to say. My insides twisted and withered away. Only a shadow of my former self stayed behind, sipping my cool tea and nibbling on tasteless biscuits.

Astoria sighed. "It didn't help that his previous relationship also ended when his ex tried to jump to her death from the roof." She clapped a hand over her mouth and paused. "I hope you'll forgive my indiscretion. If he didn't tell you any of this, I'm not sure I was supposed to."

"There's nothing to forgive, Astoria," I quickly reassured her. "I'm glad you told me. I'll think I'll go rest and shower."

My mind was a swirling mess by now. Somehow I made it to my bedroom, falling face-first onto the plush bed.

Was I wise to trust a former Death Eater over whom women were going into suicidal madness?

I blinked. My eyes were stinging and wet. I couldn't help but wonder what made them that way. Was I looking into my own future? In what little I had witnessed, being close to Lucius was both toxic and addictive. And I couldn't deceive myself into believing it was healthy. Like all addictions, in the long term it was undoubtedly dangerous. Overtime, it could even be deadly.

After my shower, I received a package from Lucius.. Inside was an outfit for dinner complete with shoes. There were no tags, but the quality of the fabric hinted that the clothes were more costly than my entire wardrobe put together. Inside the dress was a lingerie set of bra and knickers. That was oddly strange for me. I never had a man give me underwear before. It felt ... off. Slipping into the black dress, I examined myself in the mirror. It was chick and sexy, but the hemline was much shorter than I'd choose on my own. For a private dinner at home, I supposed it didn't matter. I did wonder how many witches stood here before me. Lucius seemed to have the system down pat. How many more would come after me?

 _Many, many, many more._

I continued to wait for Lucius, but time seemed to stand still. Already he circumscribed what I wore, what I did, what I ate, and when. I didn't mind it. After all, I had agreed to this last month. However, if he intended to be so domineering of my minutia, I'd rather he'd do it from one of Casa Valentina's many rooms.

My heart nearly stopped beating when I heard his voice, "Miss me, Miss Granger?"

He stood in the doorway of my bedroom, leaning loosely against the frame. my lips parted, but no sound came out. There was something about the look of him; he seemed at once brighter and darker than physics should permit, as if the contrast was cranked up in my retinas. He stepped closer.

"Or perhaps you're not the sort to pine?"

Feigning cool indifference, I cocked my head coyly in his direction. "Honestly, I hardly noticed your absence, sir."

He smirked. "As cruel as you are clever."

He walked to the edge of my bed and smoothed out the duvet before sitting down. He stared so hard at me, I shuddered. Whenever he looked at me like that, I had the distinct feeling he was performing Legilimency on me. However, I had no desires to conceal my thoughts from him.

"You're tense. Did something upset you today?" he asked.

I burned beneath his gaze. "No," I lied. "I'm just getting used to all this."

"Me too. You are a distraction. I was close to leaving early." He stood up and went to the drinks cabinet in the corner. He took out two snifters and filled them with some noxious spirit. "You're a deadly temptation, Hermione." He handed me one glass and clinked his own against it. "First day is done. We both survived."

I took a small sip. The moment the liquid touched my tongue, it burned. Lucius smiled, as he watched my face as I struggled to swallow the vile concoction.

He sat down on the edge of my bed once more. "Why don't you tell me about your day?"

"There's not much to tell. I stayed here, exploring, talking to Astoria. I rested; I was sore from the airplane ride."

He ran his hand up my leg. "Are you still?"

I quivered when he leaned closer. "A little," I managed to say. _A lot, more like it._

Lucius licked his lips as he gave me a once over. "Liar," he snarled before placing a chaste kiss on my forehead. He moved to rest against the footboard and drew my legs into his lap. "Keep going. Tell me the rest." His touch provoked a scintillating agony inside me. He traced his hand along my calf then back down to my foot, stroking the arch with his thumb. It tickled but I didn't laugh. The drink he made me was a strong intoxicant, but it paled in comparison to his touch and scent.

I obeyed him and recounted my day, purposely leaving out the part about Astoria's story. I felt strange lying by omission to him. I wanted to ask him so many questions about his life, but I couldn't bring myself to ask even the least intrusive of them. I was half-hypnotized, only answering his questions and not asking any of my own - a perfect picture of feminine submission of the kind I typically despised. When dinner was announced, we went down and suffered it in silence. I hardly noticed that we finished eating until Lucius folded his napkin and went to the gramophone. He didn't ask me to dance; he simply offered me his hand, and I took it.

He wrapped his arm around my waist, and I became self-conscious of my dancing and any missteps I might make. Unlike me he was at ease and pleased to be with me. Soon I gave in. I laid my cheek against his chest and let him turn me in smooth spirals around the dinning salon.

Despite the soreness from our Mile High adventure, I felt arousal stirring between my thighs. My cheeks heated. Somehow he always had this effect on me. It was easier to deal with it when I didn't have to talk to him or look him in the eye. Lucius spun me half-way around until our arms crossed and my back pressed against him. He spun me to face him again. Our eyes locked. His gaze pierced a clear path through the core of my brain, leaving me paralyzed. Soreness be damned! I was burning for him!

In the twinkling lights of the chandelier, we continued to dance in silence, watching each other. We stood close as the song ended. The record crackled and hissed beneath the needle. Then he abruptly let go of me. My knees nearly buckled. I hated when he did that.

 _Warning, Mr. Malfoy. A warning, please._

"It's time," he said.

I raised an eyebrow at him, a perfect imitation of his signature gesture. "Time for what?"

"I want to show you something upstairs. Don't be frightened. I'd rather hate for you to leave before you even had a chance to get settled in."

My stomach sank lower. I was trying to keep an open mind, but my imagination ran away with me. I picture a dreadful dungeon behind those locked doors. Still, I obediently followed him up. He halted in the middle and I nearly walked smack into him.

"Understand, Hermione," he said, turning back to me. His face was somber. "Whatever it may look like, you'll always be safe inside this house." Lucius took my hand and drew me onto the step he stood on. "No one will harm you."

I didn't know what to say to that. I wanted him to clarify, to elaborate on his cryptic statements. But my mind was elsewhere. All I did was nod solemnly in understanding and let him lead me to his room.


	2. Chapter 2

There was not the slightest doubt in my mind what would happen in his room. _His room._ Just what dark secrets would I discover there? My limbs began to quiver as we reached the landing, and he led me by the wrist down the hall to ... a study. It was a near replica of the one in his Manor back home. My eyes darted anxiously over to the low, leather daybed, where he'd both bruised me and made me beg for more. Was it a copy or was it the same one? My breath was labored as I sat down on it. He didn't join me. He stood at his desk, sifting fixedly through a slim stack of parchment sheets. He drew one out and laid it in my lap with a quill.

"Sign this."

My eyes narrowed. By a very wide margin, paperwork was easily the last thing I expected to be doing with him right now. I glanced over it. Several signatures, his included, were already scribbled near the bottom, and the name of an obscure bank was emblazoned at the top. He leaned back against the edge of his desk.

"It's for a vault here in Rome," he said coolly. "Like we've discussed earlier. You're to be the only one with access. So, when the time comes, Hermione," his tone darkened, "everything you need will be ready and waiting."

I scowled, glancing from him, to page, and back at him again. "I'm… not sure I understand."

He ran a hand through his well-coiffed mane. "When you do decide to leave this place, Miss Granger," his words were strict, "you might not want to waste any time about it. I don't foresee things between us going that way, but if they should, I certainly wouldn't want anything standing in your way."

My brow tensed and I glanced down at the paper again. I still wasn't sure what to make of it. But I signed and handed it back to him. He slipped it surreptitiously back into the stack.

"Something else you ought to see." He slid a second slip from the stack on his desk and passed it over to me. "In case there was any concern…"

My eyes widened. This one was more bizarre than the first. It was from St. Mungo's lab. I read his name at the top, and followed the familiar litany of sexually transmitted infections down the page, each paired in an adjacent column with a bold and crimson 'negative'.

Admittedly, I had wondered once or twice. In each of our three intimate encounters, he'd seemed to me suspiciously well-experienced. But I never, not in a million years, would have asked for his test results. The fact that he'd handed them over unbidden struck me first as inconceivably libertine, but also, in a very strange and involuted way, a little bit chivalrous. I looked them over once more, and felt my lips simper. The test was dated the day after our encounter in the conference room, and I flattered myself to suppose that he'd procured them with me in mind. I passed it back, blushing.

"How romantic," I retorted, uncertain of what a proper response should be.

He crumpled up the sheet and tossed it away. "No. It's not," his words were frosty. "But it deserves to be said, Hermione."

I lowered my eyes, regretting my little tease. "No, I understand. I really do."

He nodded heavily.

"I've had chlamydia once, Mr. Malfoy," I offered.

He smirked. "You're in good company. I've had it twice myself."

 _Twice?_ My jaw fell open. I'd thought for certain my confession would shock and appall him. Yet, as was our invariable custom, his managed to shock me more.

"Of course, you were horrified when you found out," he stated. "An infected angel. It's scandalous, isn't it?"

I glowered at him. "Don't call me that. I'm really not."

"Are you telling me you weren't horrified?" Lucius challenged me.

I didn't answer. He was right, of course. I _was_ horrified, but not because it extinguished some semblance of innocence. I was horrified because, at the time, the only man I'd been sleeping with was the one I intended to marry. Granted, I'd had my grim inklings for some time, but I ignored them. And in the end, it took a blood-tinted urine test, the snide derision of a medi-witch to convince me he was cheating. At times, it still haunted me that I never confronted him on filthy little betrayal. I'm not convinced I was afraid of losing him. I think I was terrified of losing that serene and effortless life that I had painstakingly plotted out for myself.

At least, that's how I imagined it. So I swallowed my potion at St. Mungo's women's center and gave Ron's name to the medi-witch, so she could call him in for a check-up. He was careless, but he wasn't stupid. He must've guessed what had happened. It's possible he cut off his infidelities thereafter, or perhaps he just took better precautions. Either way, it never happened again. But I still got myself checked every eight weeks, right up until the night I left him.

He shook his head. "You know, I forget sometimes how young you really are, Hermione."

I clenched my jaw, and changed the subject. "It wasn't necessary, you know. Giving me clothes, I mean."

His eyes were strict in their coolness. "I might have mentioned, Hermione. so long as you're here, you're to wear what you're given. Was I not clear?"

I shook my head and my eyes fell to the floor. "What about my wand? You never said you'd take it."

"Why precisely I should allow you to have it?" He leaned forward, eyes flashing. "One good reason, and it's all yours."

My eyes brightened. It was pitiful, really, that I should feel so elated, so grateful to him, at the mere possibility of being allowed what was mine. In that very moment, I could comprehend the absurdity, but I just couldn't help myself.

I took a slow breath. "For spell work, of course. You know I get easily cold."

Lucius shrugged. "You have a fireplace. Heated floors. A steam shower. Your own thermostat. You can turn the place into the Eighth Bolgia, if you like. You don't need spell work for all that. Even if you do, you're accomplished enough in the wandless spells, so I hear."

My brows arched. I'd only really been aware of about half of my heating accoutrements. But then, that wasn't the real reason for my entreaty.

I tried once more. "It's the only wand I've ever had. Every spell I've ever performed, I've performed with this wand. It has great sentimental value for me. It's the only magical thing my parents have ever bought for me."

He rubbed the stubble along his jawline, but said nothing.

I grimaced. I knew what he was after. The essence of his pleasure was embedded in undressing me, of making me naked inside and out. Exposing my body to him was, in a sense, simple enough. Exposing my mind to him: my memories and my emotions … that was another something entirely. And given a choice between the two, I've little doubt that he would almost always prefer the latter.

I shivered, and crossed my arms. If my vulnerability was erotic to him, then I suppose if he pressed me for more details, it would be akin to a psychological blow job. It was going to be uncomfortable for me. A bit humiliating. And only one of us was likely to enjoy it.

Lucius's eyes were impassive. "Do you have a good relationship with your parents, Hermione?"

I could feel a few warm beads of water gather in my eyes, and I wiped them away. They weren't tears. I refused to grant them that status. To me, nostalgia didn't need to be anything more than a noxious vapor. It could burn the eyes and close the throat, but it didn't need to mean something. I handled his words like ammonium smelling salts. I breathed them in, let them sting me, and breathed them right back out again.

"I did. I don't anymore," I confessed. "I've modified their memory when the war started ... they live far away now."

That was the truth. And it was the most he was going to wring from me. I think perhaps he knew that I was finished. He didn't press me any further, just lowered his head and rubbed his eyes roughly with one hand.

I heard him curse beneath his breath. I shifted, still misty and unsure of how I'd upset him.

"I really ought to have said something earlier," he looked up. "There was an issue at work today. I won't bore you with the details," he stepped closer, rounding the edge of the desk, "but I'm needed out of town for a couple of days. I fly out tomorrow morning."

My jaw clamped. I felt, simultaneously, as if the floor had fallen out underneath me, and he'd slipped an icicle between my second and third rib.

 _No…_ I glared. _He's lying to you. He just said that to mess with your head._ I started to tremble a little. _There's no way he'd make you tell him that, and then turn right around and leave you._ My breathed seethed in my throat. _He's not that cruel…_

I scowled at him, and half-sniffled, half-snarled, "You're screwing with me."

"I wish I were. However, I think you should come with me, Hermione."

I shook my head. I still didn't really believe he was leaving. "Come where?"

"Antwerp. I'm settling a little trading crisis there."

My mouth fell open. "Antwerp? But we just got here."

He nodded. "I'll be working long hours, but I could hire a guide to show you the Rubens House, and the Royal Museum." He paused, speculating, "I can't fathom that you have any interest in visiting the Villa Tinto. But I might have time to meet you for a nightcap at De Vagant." He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "What do you think, Miss Granger? Belgian waffles for breakfast?"

I was struck dumb by his proposal. _What the hell is he thinking?_ My mind raced. _I can't go to Belgium tomorrow…_ Yet even without full possession of my faculties, I was tempted. If the options for me were to stay behind, locked up and alone here at Casa Valentina, or else to go with him; to see the _Venus Frigida_ of Rubens, and Fouquet's infamous _Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim,_ then I'd have to have been an idiot to say no. But just as I opened my mouth to assent, something stopped me. I _was_ an idiot.

"I can't," I murmured.

His eyes cooled over. "Can't, Hermione?"

I cleared my throat and dropped my eyes. "I promised to go shopping with Astoria tomorrow."

He stared at me his eyes sharp and, I think, just a little bit amused.

"And this is the reason you can't come to Antwerp with me?"

I stared at the floor, nodding feebly.

He leaned back against his desk and cocked his head, "And if I forbid you from staying? Would it change your mind at all, Hermione?"

I took a moment to mull it over. The implications were obvious, and by now coercion was so common to our conversations, it was on its way to becoming its own idiom. If he wasn't going to let me stay in Rome, I had no apparent reason to stay. Defying him was excluded from the get-go in the curved lines of my logic. Syllogistically, I think the major premise was too problematic. I knitted my brow and shook my head.

"I just can't." I sighed, exasperated. "I promised and I need to get my bearings in the city."

He held me in his gaze a while. I could almost feel him tweezing through the gyri and sulci of my mind.

"You think you're quite persuasive, don't you, Miss Granger?" Lucius ran a rough hand through his hair, and closed his eyes. "As long as you're home by four, I do not see why you shouldn't start exploring Rome."

"You mean… you're letting me stay?"

"A driver will take you both wherever you wish to go and he'll bring you back here at four." He pointed sternly to the fireplace. "I'm going to call at five and you are going to answer."

"Y-yes, sir," I breathed, still half-stunned. "Thank you."

He stepped toward me. "You need to swear to me you'll be careful tomorrow. I'm not in love with the thought of you going out while I'm away."

I smirked as he wrapped his arms around my waist. Overbearing as it was, his concern for me was almost endearing. At least, now that I knew he wouldn't let it stand in my way tomorrow.

I raised a coy brow, "You don't think that's a little paranoid, Mr. Malfoy?"

"Perhaps." He cocked his head, and pulled me closer. "But I was in Moscow for the Constitutional Crisis. Three days, they were shooting protesters in the street." His eyes flickered, and dimmed, "Just promise, you'll be careful."

I laid my head against his chest. By our nature, we were never truly equal. But at least in that moment, it seemed to me he'd made us even.

I nodded solemnly. "I will. I promise. And besides… I really don't think you'll have a lot to worry about," I simpered and slid my fingers beneath his lapels. "It's Rome, not Baghdad."

He smirked wryly and lifted me toward him onto my toes. We kissed once. It was warm, and tender, and sort of teasing and sweet. We kissed again. The heat stayed. And everything else went up in flames.

Our lips sparred with one another, and I struggled as his grip on me constricted. I didn't struggle against him, really. I struggled toward him, into him. No matter how we moved, no matter how I writhed, I couldn't get myself close enough. I wanted a surfeit of him, something for all five of my senses. I wanted the warmth of his skin, and the indescribable scent of him. _The taste…_ It vexed me, and it always would. He was like ocean water, and I, some castaway, dying of thirst. It would never matter how much I drank; each little swallow would just dry me out and leave me craving him all the more. I'm not exaggerating when I say that had his kiss kept going, it could have killed me. It was it a kind of violence he enacted, and it escalated with every heave, and each caress. Yet I was a willing martyr. I let his hold on me tighten, right up until the moment he tore me away. He snarled, his teeth grazing the edge of my ear.

"Take off your dress, Hermione."

My eyes were shut. I was panting a little. It seemed whenever our lips met, I had a dangerous habit of forgetting how to breathe.

 _He…wasn't serious?_ I started to open my eyes.

"No, you'll keep them closed," he growled. "And you'll take this off." He clutched a fistful of my dress at the neckline, "Or I will tear you out of it, Hermione."

I didn't dare speak. My only answer to him was a timid obedience and, while I certainly didn't hurry, I didn't exactly hesitate either. He stood so close to me. I could feel the heat of him radiating over me, as I groped blindly at the buttons.

"Good girl…"

I shuddered. His voice was rough as a death rattle. With my eyes still shut, I felt out the buttons that lined my dress, and slipped each of them open, one-by-one. He started to harden against my thigh. It startled me a little, but all that it took was a couple of tugs, and the dress dropped in soft heap around my ankles. I drew a sharp breath through my teeth as he ran the back of his hand down my throat, and over the pale, goose-pimpled skin of my chest.

"So fragile…" his voice quavered darkly as he traced the margins of my breastbone. "You know it frightens me sometimes," he seethed, "how easy it would be to break you."

 _Me too, sir._ I trembled as his fingertips followed the delicate curve of my collarbones, and swept up over my shoulders. They moved slowly, intertwining at the nape of my neck, then down. My skin seared as he unfastened my brassiere.

He didn't denude me straightaway. He lingered there, letting the lace straps dangle down my back and sank his hands into the sharp hollow between my shoulder blades. In that moment, wondering what in the world he was going to do with me, the already subtle distinction between anticipation and terror was entirely arbitrary to me. My teeth chattered, even as he kissed me. And when he withdrew, he brought with him the entangled lacework of my little balconette. By reflex, I crossed my arms to cover myself.

"No," Lucius said it once more and clasped my wrists. He set them at my sides and held them there, "You're going to let me see every piece of you, Hermione. And you are going to stand very still for me."

Frozen there, half-nude, half-humiliated, and still so turned on that it hurt a little not to be touching him, I wished he'd allow me to at least be able to gaze back at him. But I did as he told me. I stood still. I kept my eyes closed. I could hear him breathing, and felt the pressure fluctuating in the air between us. I waited for him. He made me wait. And then, he made me wait longer. More than my lust for him, my blind obedience, or even my inborn desire to please, I think that patience was the depravity in me that he most often exploited.

At last, so lightly that for a moment I thought I'd imagined it, he swept his hand along the bare and tender edge of my breast. My breath quickened. My body swayed. He touched me again, stroking almost as softly, but let his fingers draw a slow, invisible meridian across my nipples. Without meaning to, I moaned and sensed a little shift in the gravitational field as my body stretched outward, giving itself over to him.

"Keep still."

His scold was sharp. I flushed, straining to shut my eyes tighter. I knew he was setting me up for failure. He knew it too. He had to know. Wrestle as I might to remain still, my body was a literal clockwork of nervous and paroxysmal tics. I shivered when cold. I shuddered when fearful. My thighs, eyelids, and lower lip took turns fasciculation when he leered at me. Right then, I was struggling to suppress all three and to keep truly still while he tormented me seemed no less than a physiological impossibility.

He put his hands on me again, and I knew immediately that he no longer intended to tease. I tensed, drawing every muscle I had into a motionless and isometric contraction. It its precision, I'd admit that his fondling was more mechanistic than sensual. He wasn't exploring my body; he was operating it. Every caress, with great malice aforethought, meant to arouse, madden, and bring me to my knees. I dug my nails into my thighs as he let his breath loose over my chest. He grazed my nipples again, and I nearly collapsed.

"I won't tell you again." He caught me, and wrapped his hand around my throat. "Control yourself. Or I'll do it for you."

I don't know. I might have taken him up on the offer. To be held down by Lucius would always come more naturally to me than holding still. But there was a cold and dissuading edge in his voice. I think perhaps he was daring me to defy him, as if to illustrate it very early on that my actions here had consequences. At that time, he'd never truly punished me for disobedience. I'd never given him the opportunity. And nor would I for another three days at least. But that night, though what he asked of me seemed beyond the bounds of possibility, I was not yet prepared to tell him 'no'.

His hand was still at my throat; not quite tight enough to choke me, but enough to remind me that he could.I drew several slow, shallow breaths, and much as I'd unbuttoned my dress for him, I went down, one-by-one, tightening up each fiber and sinew in my body. It started in my neck. My scaliness hardening beneath his hand, and it didn't stop until I'd drawn the tendons of my toes tight as piano wire. Honestly, I can't explain my logic. But from within the wanton, blue haze with which he'd poisoned me, tempering myself to his touch was about the best I could come with. And strangely enough, it sort of worked. At least, it did at first.

I suffered stoically beneath his fresh caresses. My body was as a statue; a caryatid, strained, load- bearing, and serene. Each wave of indigo electricity with which he struck me, I internalized, spreading out the anguish through my limbs and hips and torso, until at last it began to dissipate and disappear. Even so, my ground wire had its limits, and as each stroke of his hand left behind a swiftly building residual resonance in me, I knew it was only matter of time before his touch tore me apart at the seams.

My wait was not a long one. Without warning, his hand abandoned my throat and swept down the length of me, over my breastbone and my navel, coming to rest at the little, black band of my panties. I gave a shrill gasp as he snapped them open, but I kept myself still, even as I felt his hand slip lower.

Yet he didn't touch me. He let his hand hover there barely an angstrom off my skin. And once again, in agony, I had to stay patient. All the while, his other hand moved in seamless, interlocking circles over my breasts, grazing with ever greater frequency the tips of my stiff and swollen nipples. The touch he used, with its measured pressure and abiding pace, was like a ceramicist raising a vase out of clay. The higher he raised me, the more fragile I felt.

Once more, his hand moved lower. Like some pitiful arthropod, I sensed him through the tiny tufts of my hair. I panted shamelessly. I knew my lips were disgracefully slick for him. They were almost weeping. But that was very much beyond my control. Every shred of executive function I still retained over my body was funneled into staying still for him. Already, my nails had dug as deep into my thighs as they would reach. When his palm dipped just half a centimeter closer, I lost control. My knees quaked, my thighs quivered. I felt a flash of terror as each fiber of muscle that I'd held so still for so long began to unravel around me.

"Come," he whispered and drew the length of his long finger across my clitoris. He did it just once. And I came. I fell forward against him, groaning, gasping, and grinding myself against his hand. The tension he'd pent up inside me was too much, and with every convulsion I feared the next might snap me in two. And while the waves themselves were strong, I knew even in midst of it that the strain had left me weak. After the last contraction left me, I would've toppled right to the floor had he not held me upright.

Lucius kept me there, clasping my cheek against his chest and ran his hand through my hair, gently extricating the barrette with which I tamed my hair. I huddled into him, shivering and slipped my arms beneath his suit jacket. I was happy, at long last, to be held by him, but I couldn't help feeling a bit timid about it. This kind of affection, all gentle, and attentive, and benign, was something I'd only ever received when he was truly through with me.

If by no other laws than those of binomial algebra, I knew we couldn't possibly be finished. He was still made of stone. I could feel him, almost pointing himself in my direction. I bit my lip. Euclid always allowed for a remainder, but I knew precisely how to balance this equation. I let my knees go limp for him and began to kneel. Midway down, he stopped me and guided me down onto the daybed instead. I opened my eyes, stunned.

"That won't be necessary…" He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dried off his still-glistening fingertips. "I've traumatized you enough for tonight. Now let's get you ready for bed."

I didn't know what to say. He was undoubtedly the only man I'd ever encountered to stop me from going down on him. He'd done it twice now, and I think part of me was almost offended. Not that it was something I enjoyed, or that I took any particular pride in my 'talents'. Yet having had ample practice with my ex, the truth was, I was good at it - really good - and perhaps even exceptional. And just once, it might have been nice to call upon those degrading and painstakingly cultivated skills for someone who truly deserved it.

But tonight was not that night.

He produced a silken nightgown and proceeded to drape it over my head. It was beyond the pale, really, being dressed for bed by him like a child. I'd like to believe that if I'd had even an ounce of defiance left in me, I would never have consented to it. However, he had an uncanny knack for siphoning off my resistance just before I might need it. As such, he seldom appeared to take anything that wasn't, to my not infrequent wonder, already his. It could be called a seduction only insofar as Hemingway said the same thing of the bullfights in Pamplona. By the end of it, one of us was too tired to move, and would have to watch, helpless and expiring, as the other made ready to run us through.

He smoothed my hair over my shoulders. "Now off to bed with you," he drew his mouth to one side, "I'll likely be gone before you wake up."

I sighed. Somehow in the skirmish, I'd almost managed to forget that he was leaving. "How long will you be gone?" I crossed my arms, staring down at his shoes.

"Two nights," he answered. "I'll be back before the weekend. Think you can stay out of trouble for me that long, Miss Granger?"

I leered at him, realizing with a soft throb that I would miss more than his looks and his witticisms in the next several days. It embarrassed me a little that already I could feel ready for him again, when here he had abstained from his release completely. It made me self-conscious and it made me question whether or not he was truly attracted to me.

 _Although…_ I smirked as he stepped closer. The still-pulsating erection in his trousers offered no small measure of reassurance.

I nodded, "Only two?"

"Only two." Lucius leaned closer and kissed me on the forehead. "And remember — you're back in this house by four tomorrow, five at the latest."

"Yes, sir…"

I breathed it out of instinct without any trace of irony. Had my blood not already given up all of its color in the midst of our mêlée, my skin might have flushed even deeper.

"Good girl." He kissed me once more, this time on the lips and spun me around. "Out you go," he growled. "I have some work to do. And you, little girl, are a very deadly distraction."

I giggled as he gave me a playful push toward the door. I grasped the handle and glanced back.

 _He's really leaving me alone for two days?_

Lucius stood almost motionless over my little heap of discarded clothing, staring back darkly as I drew the door shut. But I caught the handle again just before it latched. I wanted to steal one last look; one precious tableau to carry me through the next sixty some odd hours. I held my breath, peering back at him through a tiny crack in the door.

He bent down slowly, snatching up my dress and my bra from the floor. He held them for a moment, meditative, then brought them both beneath his nose, and breathed deeply. He sighed, and I felt myself flush crimson. _I really shouldn't be spying on him, should I?_

It honestly hadn't occurred to me that, as a voyeur, I might make the mistake of seeing something that I couldn't unsee. Or perhaps I did realize it, but wasn't willing to admit to myself that I too might be more than just a little bit kinky. Truly though, it was a testament to the ways in which he was already corrupting me that for one disturbingly stirring split second, I thought for certain I was about to see him masturbate to the scent of me.

What he really did was hardly so sordid. He sank down into his chair, rubbing his temples with two hands. He took a thick folder from his briefcase, opened it, and wrote a lengthy letter. Then he wrote another one, rubbing his eyes again.

 _God, look at him…_ I bit my lip. _He's exhausted._ And in all reality, so was I. Hardly a moment ago, when he had me half-nude in his arms, I would've let him do what he liked with me. I would've welcomed it — even begged. Yet now, as my nerves, heart, and bloodstream full of catecholamines receded back to their drowsy baselines, I had to struggle just to operate whichever obscure little muscles were meant to keep my eyelids open.

He said he'd traumatized me enough for one night. I didn't believe him at the time. But now, shambling sleepily back toward my room, I understood that had he taken things much further with me, there was every chance in hell that I might have fallen to pieces in the middle of it. I marveled at him. I couldn't help it, as tintypes of our evening turned round in my head like the cells of some dissolute zoetrope. His touch was always enough to break me, but it was never quite enough to shatter.

I'd only just mounted the stair head when I stopped short when I heard some footsteps somewhere behind me and stopped.

"Astoria?" I spun, and called quietly in the shadows. "Is that you?" No answer. I took a step back, and my knees began to quiver. "Lucius?"

I'm not sure what I was hoping for, having just left him upstairs in his study. I heard it again, and my hair stood on end. Fighting every sympathetic nerve in my body that was screaming at me to flee, I moved very slowly in the direction of the noise. I almost cried aloud as I rounded the next corner. _No… No. Come on, not this way…_ I pleaded with whatever unseen poltergeist I was pursuing. I recognized this corridor — at its far end stood the only locked door at Casa Valentina, his bedroom.

I felt a black, gelatinous lump of dread condense in my stomach and begin to curdle. I thought of Astoria's stories — her ridiculous histoire de fantôme, and her far less ridiculous reminiscence of Narcissa Malfoy's unfortunate 'episodes'. I backed away, moving into the moonlight of a diamond-paned window. I'd only just resolved to chicken out, and retreat upstairs to the relative refuge of my room, when I heard it again. And I turned just in time to see a huge, black shadow hurdling toward me out of the darkness.

It's something of a miracle that I didn't scream. I think fear must have immobilized my vocal cords. Fortunately, it was nothing; only a play of shadow and light coming from the window.

Feeling ridiculous in the vein of Catherine Morland, I hurried to my room and closed the door tight behind me before washing up. It was a dark and unpleasant thought that crossed my mind as I slid myself, at last, beneath the sheets. I felt I could begin to understand it. Even if my images of it were only in grayscale, crosshatches and stippling, I felt I could begin to understand how Narcissa Malfoy and her successor might have lost their minds in this house.


	3. Chapter 3

Lucius was gone by the time I woke up. And while he left no notes behind with my dress that morning, he did leave me my wand. I stared down at it, sighed and leaned my forehead against the glass of the window. I might've been seated right next to him as he soared over the continent. It would have been so easy to say yes. I could almost feel his hand resting heavily on my thigh, the coolness of his breath as we flew over a storm cloud, and he whispered to me his lascivious intentions for when we landed.

The wand was no small matter to me. Just as he'd made a clear point of keeping me wandless the day before, leaving me with it was tantamount to allowing me a measure of freedom. It meant, through the twisted and tenebrous dialectics of Lucius Malfoy, that he trusted me. At least, that's how I chose to interpret it. I wanted badly to think he still believed that outside the bounds of our strange arrangement, I remained a fully grown adult, who was capable of doing grown adult things. I could find my way around Rome without dying. I could forgo getting into vans with strangers. I could stay out of danger.

I spent the day with Astoria, as she showed me around Rome. We didn't spend too much time on sights; I wanted to save those for Lucius. I had a good feeling that with time I would become accustomed to the hustle and bustle of Rome. However, on the way back to Casa Valentina, my mind was on Lucius.

Lucius … was ice. He was stone. He was cold and clear, and about as rough as an uncut diamond.

Astoria promised to stop by tomorrow before waltzing off to her own house. The house-elf met me at the door. I greeted her absently, and she asked right away if I'd like something to eat. My stomach was in knots, so I declined and ambled my way upstairs to Lucius's study. I pushed open the door. I stood there at the threshold, trying to catch some lingering scent of him, then tiptoed over to his desk and sank into his chair.

The clock taunted me. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to talk right away. But I couldn't. All I could do was sit there in his chair, waiting on pins and needles for the phone to ring, fully aware of how classically pathetic my situation sounded. Never have I thought I'd find myself in this position. So in the end, I decided to just embrace the cliché and snoop around in his stuff.

The first two drawers were innocuous enough. Both were filled up with documents and dossiers, all of which seemed arranged with a distinctly anal retentive attention to tidiness. I smirked, debating just how foolish it would be to slip a few of them back in out of order. The third drawer made me cringe.

It contained his wife's psychiatric report from the asylum. I bit my lip, and flipped through to a random page. My eyes scanned the page before I snapped the file shut. I didn't dare read any further. It was bad enough to discover the cold, sterile language of a clinician, but I couldn't imagine ... I couldn't imagine what it felt like to be so unhappy with Lucius. My hands relaxed, and I laid my palms flat on the file. I shook my head and started to replace the case file when a small, grainy photograph fell out onto the desk. I picked it up, squinted and smiled.

It was a young Lucius. I leaned closer, my grin widening. He looked about my age, or just a little bit older. His arms were crossed, and he was leaning against a bookshelf. He wore an old-fashioned gray robes. His hair was a little shorter; all tousled and boyish. However, the wry, cocksure smirk was exactly the same. I giggled silently to myself. I loved it. And I think I might've just stolen it for myself had he been all alone in the photo. But there was something about his eyes— all pale, imperious, and empty — that reminded me of those marble busts of the early Caesars. I slipped it back inside the file and slammed the drawer shut. I set my elbows on the desk and rubbed my forehead with both hands. I hated imagining it. I hated imagining Lucius finding his wife like that. I hated even more imagining what drove his past partners to suicide. Narcissa Malfoy seemed like too strong of a woman to give into her despair like that. She didn't seem like she would voluntarily leave her son and pass up the chance to see him mature and start a family of his own ... unless her heart and spirit were broken.

Then another thought popped into my head. I wondered who his other suicidal ex was — the one who tried to jump off the roof. All these women driven to end their lives when Lucius had chosen to end their relationships.

I hated it. I hated thinking about it. I hated it, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I couldn't. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop thinking about how a life with Lucius could end up like this. I slumped lower into his chair. I wondered.

I shut my eyes tighter and felt my knees slide out to the arms of his chair. All this thinking about Lucius reminded me of the last time we were together on the plane, when he inducted into the Mile High Club. I really missed having a sex with him. Lucius wasn't as demanding as I expected him to be in this area. It seemed to me that I was more in the mood than he was. Last night he made me come so easily, while he was completely unbothered by getting nothing in return.

My fingers swept upward until they met at my hips, and I breathed a sharp sigh as they slid down between my thighs. An image of him loomed before him. I could hear him in my head. I could feel his flashing eyes on me. I could even smell him, as I writhed to-and-fro in his chair. The way I touched myself was timid, a little languorous and lolling. I wanted him there with me. I wanted to believe it was his hand that touched me, that caressed my clitoris through the white silk of my knickers. My lips parted and expelled a soft moan.

I could've come. With the thought of him, of his hand; the visceral sense memory seared into my skin and brain — I could've come for him right then and there. But I didn't. I held back. I wanted to keep him there with me. I wanted to hang onto him as long as I could. And I could really only get away with tormenting myself so endlessly by believing that he'd told me to do so — that he was there and wouldn't allow me to stop. There was a cyclical and self-defeating sort of logic to it and, little by little, I let my libido become a kind of Lambek calculus, rolling in soft, gentle ellipses between my legs. I laid my cheek against one shoulder, whimpering as another warm throb swelled up inside me.

I set my mind free. I fantasized. I imagined his arms around me. I gasped and arched backward.

 _Yes._

My thighs closed tight around my fingers. I forced one final sigh through clenched teeth and, at last, let myself begin to slip.

The fire place crackled, and my body jerked, and I nearly toppled out of his chair. His timing was torture. It was sadistic. He might have spent days devising new ways to fluster, frustrate, and humiliate me. Nothing could have come close to the agony of that interruption. The tension it left in me was too much to sustain. _Entirely too much…_ I saw the flames take shape and tried to scrape myself together. I ached. I whimpered and swiveled the chair to face the fireplace. I panted softly. Then he spoke, and I knew my suffering had only just started.

"Hermione?" he growled at me across the continent.

I shuddered and shut my eyes. I didn't dare answer him. He'd caught me, as it were, red-handed. My fingers were still coated in my wetness. My hips still rocked over the smooth, warm leather of his chair.

"Hermione," he spoke again, more sternly, and I felt the free ends of my muscles begin to unravel, and fray. "Speak."

I tried, but his voice was all it took. I couldn't stop myself. My climax spread through me. Lucius was silent. I bit my lip until it stung, humiliated to the point of melting.I couldn't allow myself to hope he hadn't noticed. Two nights in a row now, he'd coaxed that unmistakable moan from my lips. He knew its timbre and its tremor; it was a melody he must have known by heart.

"You just came," he breathed, and my face began to burn even hotter. "Didn't you?"

My instinct, of course, was to lie, but I swallowed my instincts and spoke.

"I did."

Again, silence. I cringed.

"You were touching yourself when I called?"

It was less a question than an crease in my brow cut deeper.

"I was."

"I see." His voice, still sharp, seemed to soften slightly. "Then I should have called on you sooner. I would have liked to listen in, Hermione. Start to finish."

I smirked weakly, my skin still red as rust.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not." His tone was sly. "I'm glad you've learned to come when I call."

It was a miserable pun, but I couldn't open my eyes wide enough to roll them. Pavlov's puppy. I grimaced. He'd have me salivating at the sound of a bell.

"Tell me," he pressed, "what precisely does Hermione Granger fantasize about when she masturbates?"

I slumped forward, my forehead resting on his desk, unable to sustain the weight of the embarrassment.

"Please," I begged, "don't tease me, Lucius. I'll die."

"I wouldn't dare, Miss Granger." He leered at me through the flames. "I promise there's not a mystery in this world that intrigues me more."

I shut my eyes. "Must I really say it?"

He snarled softly, "Must I really answer that, Hermione?"

 _Render unto to Caesar..._ I shivered.

"You," I breathed, biting my lip. "I was imagining what you were like when you were younger."

"Younger," he repeated.

"When you were my age," I murmured.

"Ah," he chuckled darkly."I hate to play the marplot, Hermione, but I doubt young Lucius would have measured up to your imagination."

My ears pricked. Slowly, I raised my head up from the desk. "Come again?"

He growled at me, playfully, "You first."

I flushed. "You said you wouldn't tease."

"Yes. It seems I'm not to be trusted."

My brow furrowed. _Maybe the most honest thing you've ever said, sir._ Apart from the old photograph I'd unearthed from his desk drawer, I had a hard time picturing Lucius Malfoy as anything other than the handsome, lupine monster I'd met at Flourish and Blotts.

My eyes narrowed. "You're evading, Lucius."

"Perhaps," he answered.

I thought, a little tensely, and sighed.

"Would you really like to know?"

"There's not a mystery in this world that intrigues me more, Mr. Malfoy."

He chuckled again, but stiffly.

"Fine," he began. "For one, your young Lucius may have looked clean-shaven but, in truth, he couldn't grow a whisker until he turned twenty-five."

I smiled warily. I'm not sure I'd ever heard him say something self-effacing before, but frustrated facial hair was hardly what I was after. And he knew it.

"More," I implored, "Please."

"More?" Ever so slightly, he sounded almost amused. "Let's see. He owned an impressive collection of autographed Quidditch jerseys."

I cupped my hand to my mouth and sniggered.

"Something funny, Miss Granger?"

"No." I wiped my eyes. "No, I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time imagining you as a fanboy of Quidditch like some of my friends are."

"Well, I was," he confirmed with pride.

I squinted at his face in the flames. "Tell me something more substantive than that."

He hissed between his teeth. "Your young Lucius believed he was possessed by a demon."

A slow, serrated chill made its way down my spine. _He's teasing. He has to be._ "Lucius," I murmured, "what would make you think such a thing?"

"Dreams I had," he answered coolly. "Obsessions. Urges. Things I was compelled to do to women." He paused. "It never made sense to me growing up. I wanted to think of each witch I was with as the loveliest creature I'd ever laid eyes upon — and still want nothing more in the world than to possess and ruin her." His words turned to steam in my ear. "Those thoughts — lurid, alluring. I couldn't accept that they that they were mine. Even for a Malfoy, they would be considered too deviant." He trailed off, forcing an arid chuckle from his chest. "Honestly, I thought I had the devil in me."

"The devil," I repeated, not at all convinced he wasn't taking the mickey out of me.

"Samael, to be precise," he said grimly, "Venom of God. Seducer of Eve. But that's beside the point." His tone tightened. "The point, Hermione, is that I repressed myself halfway to a psychotic break."

The crease in my brow cut deeper. I never would have guessed he was so at war with himself. I chewed the inside of my cheek until it felt raw.

"I'm not sure what to say, Mr. Malfoy."

"I don't need you to say anything. I just need you to hear it." His voice stayed steady. "This isn't a confession, and the last thing I'd ever want from you is your pity, but I've been thinking since I left you last night," he took a breath, "I might have deceived you when I asked you to enter into this. My issues are uglier than I let on."

 _Aren't they always?_ Anxiously, I traced my fingernail along the edge of the polished wood.

"How ugly?" I swallowed. "I mean, you didn't hurt anyone ... right?"

"Not in the way that you're thinking. But I've inflicted a great deal of pain, Hermione. I've enjoyed it." Lucius let his words settle over me, like a layer of silver dust.

I shifted tensely in his chair. "Why do I feel like we should be having this conversation in person?"

His words hardened. "I'm telling you now, so that if you decide to run from me, you'll have healthy head start. I'm halfway across the continent tonight; I promise you'll never have a better chance to be rid of me."

I rolled my eyes. _How many times is he going to tell me to run?_ I tapped my fingers on his desk, a little annoyed. After the spanking? After humiliating me at the dinner table at the Russian Samovar? After standing stone still for him in the study last night? Like a statue. Like Galatea, and some perverted Pygmalion. _Have I not proven my mettle to you yet, Lucius?_

"Samael doesn't scare me, sir." I folded my fingers into a fist. "Neither do you. So if you're trying to frighten me off again, you'll need to do better. Besides, I really don't know what more you could do to me."

"Then you're more innocent than you care to admit, Miss Granger," Lucius growled at me. "You may find this difficult to swallow, but I've been holding back on you."

 _Holding back?_ I shivered again.

"I think you're bluffing," I breathed.

"Think what you will. The fact is, I can't behave as myself when we're together. Not entirely, anyhow. Last night ... the way you trembled when I made you undress..." His tone softened slightly. "I have every intention of hurting you, Hermione. I will. But I'm not interested in giving you scars." He steadied his breath, "You're not experienced. And I'm not convinced this is right for you."

I heard him. I did. And what he said made sense to me. It was insane, after all, for him to want to control me — to entrap me, hurt me, and expect me to like it. It was insane, equally, for me to give him leave to do it, offering myself up to him willingly, explicitly. At times, enthusiastically.

 _Perhaps your lapse is more mental than his, Hermione._

But still, I knew. I knew to listen to reason would have been to lose him. And while deep down I understood we weren't sustainable, it was no small sliver of me that relished our madness, that was beginning to crave it. Like a votive candle, I would leave the thing lit, until either he blew it out himself and extinguished me, or the flame finally burnt us both to cinders.

"Lucius," I whispered, "would you like to know something about young Hermione Granger?" My heart quivered in my chest. "Something she's never told anyone else?"

He made no answer, but by the rasp of his breath, I knew he was listening. "Little Hermione Granger liked getting tied up." My cheeks burned at my confession.

He spoke, his voice drawn tight as a guy-wire, "Is that so?"

"I don't know what it was, really." I shut my eyes. "Whenever I played Neverland in kindergarten with the other kids, I'd make myself Tiger Lily — just to be the girl who gets tied to the anchor." With my free hand, I pressed my fingertips deep into my temple. "In Camelot, I was Guinevere. I'd get myself captured by Mordred. Rapunzel, up in her tower. Belle locked up in the Beast's _château._ " I felt flames licking at my cheeks, "I just ... I liked it. The way it felt. The frayed, fuzzy jump rope. The little marks it made on my wrists and ankles." I broke off.

My heart was racing beneath my breast, and my chest and palms had beaded over in a cool, crystalline sweat. I had no idea, really, where I was heading with this. Admittedly, it was far from my darkest secret, but it was still much more of me than I'd intended to reveal that evening.

"You're right." I slid myself to the edge of his chair. "I'm not 'experienced'. But don't flatter yourself. I didn't just agree to this because I was afraid to tell you 'no'." I tried hard to keep my voice from shaking. "I like it. At least, I think I do." My toes curled up underneath his desk. "Either way, I'll run from you when I'm good and ready, Lucius. I promise."

Once more, he was silent. I waited a little longer, pins and needles nettling my skin. "A-re ... are you ... " I stammered, "are you still there?"

"I am," Lucius answered stormily. "I was just wondering."

"Wondering?"

"I was wondering," he sneered,"whetherI still have my old jump rope stashed away in the cellar."

The blood froze beneath my skin. I choked, "I wouldn't have taken you for the double Dutch type, sir."

"I was wondering also," he went on darkly. "Do you know the meaning of the word 'enthrall'? The real one?"

"Like ... um ... to rivet or beguile?" I bit my lip. "Captivate, I guess."

"From the Old English,'þræl', Hermione. To put in moral or mental bondage. To enslave."

I swallowed thickly, unable to speak.

Lucius continued, "If you find yourself something less than enthralled by being at Casa Valentina — by being in my service — this may become very onerous for you when I return.I won't hold back any longer. Even if I wanted to, I'm not convinced that I could. You madden me, Miss Granger."

I blushed and my hands began shaking. _À la folie. Pas du tout… You madden me too._

I repeated him airily. "You'll really be away all of tomorrow as well?"

"I'll return on Thursday." He sounded restless. "I am tempted to Apparate back right now."

I smirked weakly. The sentiment was as sweet as it was unsettling.

"I'd like you to keep busy while I'm gone," he warned. "There's a sinister adage about idle hands."

"I have no problems keeping myself occupied," I retorted. I didn't dare say what I was truly thinking—men are never around when you really need them anyway. "So there's no possibility of you coming home sooner?"

"I think you know I don't have a problem with coming early," he slyly said. "But I will try to expedite my efforts here to bring me back to you sooner."

It was crass, I know, but I couldn't help but giggle.

 _Alright. Enough with the puns, already._

"Perhaps it's best you stayed behind," Lucius remarked. "You might have been miserable here — I'll have to work through dinner."

My brow creased. I had not the ghost of an idea what he was really doing in Antwerp, but he was the most hardworking wizard I've ever encountered.

"I should let you go. Shouldn't I?" I offered half-heartedly.

"I wouldn't hear of it."

"But I should, though," I murmured. "I don't want to keep you from your responsibilities. Especially if it may delay your return."

Lucius chuckled grimly. "So kind of you to look out for me, little one."

"I'm serious." My lips stiffened. "Whatever weird, international enterprise you're up to, I don't want you blowing it on my account. You sound exhausted."

"Blowing it?"

I blushed. _Incorrigible._

"You know what I mean," I mumbled.

"I'm disinclined to relinquish you, Hermione." His parlance put me on edge. "So here's my proposal."

"I'm listening.'

"I'll let you go for tonight," he started. "And you'll stay in tomorrow. You won't leave Casa Valentina unless it's on fire."

I drew my mouth to one side. Negotiating with him, I knew, never, ever turned out the way I expected. Warily, and barely above a whisper, I agreed.

"Read. Browse. Eat. Don't waste away while I'm gone. And I want you to touch yourself."

I think my heart may have missed a few beats. But he wasn't finished.

"But," he cut in coldly, before I could protest, "you will not come until I call tomorrow. I want to be absolutely clear about this," he spoke slowly, deliberately. "It pleases me, Hermione, to know that you're suffering"

My jaw seemed to have frozen itself shut. I felt my fingers tingling, and all the blood draining out of my face. I sat there, pale as a phantom, unable to speak.

"Do I make myself clear, Miss Granger?"

Straining to move the muscles of my cheeks and chin, I answered, "As glass, sir."

"Good girl," he rasped, his voice rough as sandstone. "Until tomorrow, then."

"Until then." The knot in my throat nearly choked me.

"Sweet dreams."

With that, his face disappeared from the flames.

His last words rumbled heavily in my ear. I stood and staggered back against the desk, my hands trembled a little. I folded them tightly.

 _Stay in. Stay fed._ Staring, still stunned, I recited his instructions in my head. _Read something. Browse something. Eat something._ I shivered, though my cheeks and chest were on fire. _And then?_

It was cruel of him. Had he said it out of the blue, I could have been indignant. I could have scoffed at him and called him a pervert, but my untimely petit mort provided precedent. He was asking only as much as I'd already accidentally given him. I shook my head, still blushing fiercely, and turned away from the fireplace. I gazed once more to his monstrous bookshelves.

His shelves were littered with the titles on psychology, geophysics, and crystallography. I scowled, reluctant to pull anything from his little wasteland of psychiatry and stone. Then, at the far end I spied a gold-lettered spine that might have been left thereby mistake. I reached out, balancing carefully at the edge of the ladder and fanned through the pages.

 _What on earth are you doing here, my dear?_

It was a slender Emily Dickinson, bound in oiled, black leather. The aroma alone was enticing enough, but in the margins of each page, I found something I absolutely couldn't resist. With an ice blue pen, he'd jotted out notes in his fastidious and unmistakable cursive. At random,I stopped to skim a verse entitled 'The Master', under which he'd scrawled the words: _'Anticipation / Algolagnia. She craves pain upon arousal.'_

 _Oh, come on!_ I gasped, and snapped it shut. I shook my head. _Get your mind out of the gutter, Mr. Malfoy._

It seemed insane to me, saying such things about poor, timid Emily Dickinson. Belle of Amherst, locked away in her beastly cottage.

 _But still…_ I glanced at the book again, still grasping it slowly, I made my way down the ladder and tucked it bashfully beneath my arm. From the moment I agreed to move in with him, it seemed I'd been breathing ambivalence instead of air. Now, little as I liked to admit it, I could see him rubbing off on me. I could feel it. His deviance, his decadence; they were contagions that had invaded my body. They made me sick, as sick as him. By the time my feet reached the ground again, I knew nothing could be more tempting to me that night than the chance to poison myself with every last, ghastly word he'd scribbled down.

I let the book fall open in my palm and buried my nose between the pages. I barely noticed moving out into the corridor. I barely noticed descending the stairs, nor sitting down to dinner when house-elf summoned me to the table. In retrospect, I really hope I wasn't rude. I was mesmerized ... I was … enthralled. And when at last I found myself upstairs, already undressed, and slipping into bed between the blankets, I'd been over every page, ravenously, perhaps half dozen times at least.

I stared up at the ceiling, wide-eyed, clutching the duvet across my chest. I suppose I ought to have been exhausted, but sleep, I soon realized, was out of the question. The memory of him, of his voice, alloyed with that of all the devilish words I'd devoured, and together they wound around me like a silver wire — a solenoid — amplifying all the white-hot electrical currents of my nerves.

 _Stay. Beg. Read. Good girl...'He wrapped the belt around my life. I heard the buckle snap.'_ I rolled over, curling my toes, and breathed a sharp sigh into the sheets. _' craves pain upon arousal.'_

I shuddered. Just lying there, untouched, I could feel all five of my senses deepening, and little by little, they turned against me.I felt the static in the air, prickling between the linens and my skin. I rolled once more, pressing my hips hard against a goose down pillow.

I must have twitched and fidgeted for over an hour, his words still searing my ears until the bedding tangled round my legs like a winding sheet. Sleep eluded me. Even with closed eyes, I saw his blazing gray stare glaring back at me. Aroused, almost breathless, and half-hallucinating, I felt my hand sweep downward and slip itself between my thighs.

 _'_ _It pleases me, Hermione, to know that you're suffering.'_

I felt my chest tighten as my fingertips grazed against my lips. I felt it heave as they slipped across my clitoris. I saw him there; leering, lupine, looming over me. I felt him clasp my wrist, drawing my hand steadily, deliberately, deeper into me. I moaned and felt my hips began to throb against him.

 _'_ _Good girl.'_

I gasped, casting my head back against the mattress. My legs were quivering beneath the blankets.

 _'Until tomorrow, then, Miss Granger.'_

The tremor spread its way to the rest of me. I lay there, agonized and trembling for him, whimpering softly into the darkness.

 _'_ _Sweet dreams.'_

Oh, Lucius, how I've disobeyed you.


	4. Chapter 4

**Thank you all for reading and following this story!**

* * *

They say insomnia can make you see things. It can kill you. They say breathing camphor, likewise, can make you hallucinate and seize. And they say that van Gogh used to douse his pillow and mattress with camphor every night just to lull himself to sleep. I didn't sleep at all after speaking with Lucius. I lay there, wide awake, burning between the sheets into the early hours of the morning. When, at last, lying in bed became unbearable, I rose, wraith-like, and left my room on tiptoe.

Casa Valentina always seemed a little larger, more labyrinthine, to me at night. Barefoot and dressed only in my nightgown, I ambled my way through the darkness, exploring entire corridors I'd not previously known to exist. All the while, I was tailed by some several hundred sets of leering and oil-painted eyes. Only the occasional _Sleeping Venus_ seemed to ignore me. I crossed my arms, grimacing as I passed by them, envious of all their serene and satisfied faces.

I know he intended for me to suffer. He'd said it outright. And I accidentally disobeyed him. The frustration of doing so was far worse than I ever could have anticipated. It kept me up. It kept me on pins and needles, pacing.

A chill raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I started to see things, catching odd shadows on the walls. I shivered and quickened my pace, convinced I must be on the verge of cracking up. I recalled the ridiculous histoire de _fantôme_ Astoria had shared with me, how he truly believed that the ghost of Countess Isabella still roamed the lonelier corridors at Casa Valentina. Tonight, at least, I suppose she was right, but it wasn't the shade of who was haunting these halls. It was me.

It must have been a little before dawn when I found myself sauntering down to the terrace and sinking onto a plush chair. I must have dosed off when Astoria discovered me there mid-morning.

"Good morning," she said.

"Good morning, Astoria," I replied as I raised my eyes to her.

She was followed by a house-elf with a little brass tea cart replete with coffee, figs, and a small sliver of quiche.

"Your breakfast. Please, do not hesitate to tell me or the house-elf should you require anything else." She poured some steaming coffee from a silver carafe. "Bon appetite."

I nodded my thanks, and in the far periphery of my vision, I saw her disappear.

 _Stay. Read. Eat._

Lucius's imperatives reverberated in my head. By and by, I did manage to munch on a fig or two. I bit my lip and sipped my coffee. Banished to the wilderness. Sentenced to starve.

Sighing, I walked into his study and began reading as well. I was determined to obey the rest of his commands. I was marking off items ahead of schedule. I'd stayed in. I'd eaten. I'd read. I'd done almost everything that he'd asked of me, and it was only a little past noon.

 _Almost everything._

My smile sank.

Perhaps he knew I would fail. I was certain he just wanted another chance to censure me, to leave me flustered, flushed, and falling to my knees for his forgiveness.

 _Well. Why give him the satisfaction, Hermione?_ I sighed hotly, and stood. _You_ _know precisely what you need to do._

So I did it. I clenched my jaw, and left the study, interring myself upstairs in the bedroom to do his obscene and duplicitous bidding. I let my nails scrape across the frame, sighing as I surrendered, and fell face-first across the bed.

To be absolutely honest, touching myself in an unlocked room was perhaps the last thing in the world I wanted to endure that afternoon. I didn't want to turn myself back into a moaning, mournful shadow like I had last night. Nor, for that matter, was I especially worried about what might happen if I failed to obey him again. Fear had never really served to inspire my compliance. It only inspired defiance. And while it may sound a bit moralizing, and maybe even metaphysical, if anything between the two of us was truly forcing my hand that afternoon, it was merely that I'd already given him my word. His annotations in the Dickinson book were splayed beside me on the nightstand. I snatched it up once more, nestling deeper into the linens and, with another steaming sigh, set to work.

In those first few moments, I think I actually felt a faint sliver of deliverance. But it was fleeting. It gave way, just as I'd anticipated, just as I'd feared, to more misery, chagrin, and a profound finale of nothing. All told, I was probably masturbating for less than ten minutes, yet it felt like two-thirds of eternity. I gasped and gritted my teeth, begrudgingly hoisting myself off the bed just before I utterly lost control. Had I tried to make it last any longer, I'm not convinced I could have stopped myself. It wasn't weakness. It was simply physics; a matter of momentum and inertia.

Stiff, sniffling a little, and embarrassed beyond words, I trudged back to his study, and tried once more to get lost in written works.

There was a sadistic sort of symmetry to that day. It disintegrated around me just the same as it began. The house-elf wheeled his little cart back onto the terrace just before sunset. Again, I coerced myself to swallow something. Though food turned to ash on my tongue, Lucius had assured me he would rebuke me if I let myself starve. I wandered around in the garden afterward. I plucked a blossom from the flower bed, and knelt near the edge of the fountain, tearing its delicate petals in two.

I thought of the roses he'd brought me on Valentine's Day.

 _You don't think your flowers feel pain, Hermione?_

I let the redolent shreds fall into the water.

 _I do. I think they feel more than most._

The shadows in the garden grew longer, shading in the paving stones like smudges of soft charcoal. It was past dusk when at last I returned to the bedroom, to torture myself one final time before our fire-chat.

I kept my eyes closed this time. I wanted to pretend it wasn't happening. I wanted to pretend I was asleep, or comatose. Even so, with each insufferable stroke of my wrist, I swear I could see strange lights dancing before me in the darkness. Phantasm. Phosphene. Scintillating scotoma. I was miserable, but I was mesmerized by them. Inside of my eyelids, floating on a grim pool of eigengrau, I watched the lights wither, bloom, and wither again like glimmering water lilies of white, violet, and red. I let them linger, I think, a little too long. When I came to, and finally quit abusing myself, my mouth was open; I was moaning and had to wipe acrid tears from both of my eyes.

The clock's face taunted me as it came into focus. It would be another half hour at least. He'd finally done it. He'd wrecked my head, excised my mentation, enslaved me to my senses. My nerves were on fire. I had never, ever, ever needed release so badly. I needed it more than water, more than air. In that moment, I might have murdered for it. I might have died. The feeling was that dire, that desperate. I sneered and staggered my way out into the corridor.

 _He'd better realize what he's putting me through. This is… I mean, this is just—_

I froze before an ormolu mirror in the hall, arrested by my wild-eyed reflection. I crossed my arms, shivering stiffly. It's _precisely what he said it would be._ I blushed and tucked a matted lock of hair behind my ear.

 _You've made a proper mess of me, Mr. Malfoy._

I wiped my eyes. They were already bloodshot from my night of insomnia, but my tears had turned them to rose quartz.

 _'_ _It pleases me, Hermione, to know that you're suffering.'_

I watched the girl in the mirror begin to quiver. I could see him there, obscured by the bleariness. He stood behind her, a whole head and a half taller. His arms around her waist, holding her still. His lips, and his whiskers bristling against her ear.

 _'_ _Do I make myself clear, Miss Granger?'_

 _As glass._

I was shaking still when I turned back to his study. His chair stood empty at the far end of the room. I tiptoed toward it, quivering still more with each step.

I waited there, too anxious to sit.I haven't any idea how long I stood, but at the tidal end of each breath, I counted 'one one-thousands', as if tallying the time between lightning and thunder. The sky, by and by, clouded over; shifting from violet to black, just as huge, amorphous raindrops began to hurl themselves against the windows. That storm was maybe the ugliest I'd seen all winter, but the one stirring inside me was still bleaker. My eyes locked upon the fireplace. Any moment now.

 _His permission. My release._ I waited, and waited longer, aching for him, burning alive just to hear the mere timbre of his voice.

A sound split through the room, and I nearly doubled over. The sound came again, and my heart fell to the floor. It wasn't the fireplace, but footsteps. Solemnly, I saw Astoria in the doorway. She didn't enter. She stood at threshold, her hands on her round belly.

"Hermione," she began, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I have received a message from Mr. Malfoy's assistant in Antwerp."

"A message?" I glanced up at her warily.

"Yes. You're to know that there has been a change in his affairs. A setback, it would seem. I am afraid Mr. Malfoy will not be making any personal calls until it is settled."

I felt my blood run cold and flecks of frost began to crystallize in the crevices of my chest.

"A setback," I repeated, hissing like a viper. "What sort of setback?"

She dropped her eyes, apologetic. "I don't know. It wasn't explained."

"Alright." I tried to swallow, and nearly choked. "Well, did he ... um... did he at least say how long it might take?"

She stepped forward. "He did say that Mr. Malfoy will call you again tomorrow, same time."

My veins, already ice blue, froze solid, even as my skin seemed to flicker, and burn.

"Is there anything at all I could do for you?" Astoria asked.

"No, thank you." My voice was weak and windless. I felt as if he'd just struck me in the stomach. "I think ... I think I'd just like to be alone."

"Let me know if you change your mind. You can come to dinner at our place."

I gave a slight nod, gazing leadenly at the ground, as I heard her footsteps recede in the hall. And then, I heard nothing at all. I stood stone still, the silence boring into me like a trepan, uncertain of whether I wanted to weep, whimper, or scream.

Until that moment, I think Evelyn de Morgan's _Hope in a Prison of Despair_ had always struck me as rather too histrionic for the context. The poor girl she depicted in that painting was not being maimed like Saint Agatha, nor assaulted like Susanna, or burnt alive like La Pucelle. She was only alone, isolated, forgotten; yet somehow her suffering seemed so much more palpable than the others', so much more salient, slaying, and acute. I drew my fingers into a pair of blanched and trembling fists. Now, at least, I felt I understood the incinerating, electrical arc of that woman's agony. 'Cruel and unusual' didn't begin to cover it. Without risking irreparable damage to my sanity,I doubted I'd survive another hour on my own, let alone another day. My knees begin to quake beneath me, and I steadied myself against his desk, glaring down at the inanimate fireplace.

 _'_ _A matter of some urgency.'_

I wetted my lips, reawakening the taste of him from two nights earlier. Whenever he kissed me, like a serpent, some deadly residue of his venom always seemed to linger on my skin. _Samael, Seducer of Eve…_ I bit harder. I wanted to sink my teeth into him. I wanted to taste him. I wanted him to taste me. I wanted to get his poison inside me again, to let it seep back into my blood, and intoxicate my body.

I closed my eyes, and he was there with me once more; his form conjured from the cold and rarefied air of the storm. I leaned forward slowly, arching my back for him and set my forearms down across his desk. His gravity seduced me. My breasts felt heavy and full. I felt my nipples tighten as they grazed the cool surface of the desk.

He stood behind me, silent, erect, savage. I was hardly half-dressed. I was hurting for him. Utterly vulnerable, utterly his. He ran his fingertips slowly along my spine, down to the hem of my dress. I felt him lift it, exposing my pale cheeks to the chilling air. He spread them gently, and I held my breath.I wondered, in that dizzying and delirious moment, if perhaps he was deciding whether to sodomize me. I wondered, in that moment, how such a thing might feel.

He held me. He held me struck each cheek sharply, and left my white skin crimson, and throbbing. He struck them again, a little bit harder. I had to bite my tongue to keep from whimpering as he silently freed himself from his trousers.

 _Do not look back. Do not look back._

I squeezed my eyelids tighter. I swear it was real. I swear, I could sense him there—the heat of him; a flame's tongue growing hotter, beginning to singe the tender skin between my thighs. I couldn't endure it any longer. I couldn't. I couldn't wait. I needed him — right then, right there. I needed to see him, and either prove to myself that I truly had lost my mind — that I was floridly hallucinating in a haze of unrequited lust or else that Lucius truly was my incubus, my curse, my own private and preternatural daemon lover.

Risking a gaze that I full well believed could destroy me, that could turn me to stone, I opened up my eyes. I curved my spine. I craned my neck. I turned back — and like salt in sulfurous spring water, my feverish illusion dissolved.

 _Why? Why did I look?_ I laid my cheek upon his desk, dejected. _Why did Lot's wife look back? Why couldn't Psyche just keep her stupid eyes shut?_ A sigh seared through my throat, curling off into a snarl. Very slowly, I stood up, and readjusted the hem of my dress. I was alone. I'd known it, of course, all along. But some foolish part of me really did wish I was crazy. Even insanity was preferable to remaining even one moment longer lucid and alone.

I left his study briskly, and by the time I arrived back at my bedroom, I'd made up my mind that I was furious with him. That he wished to be cruel to me, I could accept. Cruelty, at least, required his attention. But his real sin was much worse. He'd neglected me. He'd taken me for granted and defaulted on our agreement. It was all too clear that my place in the hierarchy of his priorities was far lower than I'd allowed myself to suppose. And if that was somehow meant to seem impressive to me, then he'd missed the mark completely. It didn't impress me. It made me feel cheated, and it made me feel cheap.

 _And that_ , I hissed, _after I obeyed him. I did every degrading thing he asked of me._ I narrowed my eyes. _And he can't find time to make a fire call?_

I cast myself down on the bed, fuming from every flushed pore on my body.

 _Lucius could not be bothered with romance, and whispers, and wine._

My molars began to grind, and I scraped my nails across the duvet.

 _You know what he really wants, don't you? To let his pathetic, little slave girl languish here. Lying precisely where he left her. Pining after him at all hours. Already naked._

A blue fire was flickering behind my eyes. I closed them tight, trying to smother it. _You,_ I reopened them slowly, carefully, and stared up into the folds of the canopy overhead, _have_ _been his perfect fool for him, Hermione Granger. But you'll show him now, won't you?_

I rolled over slowly, my lips curling into a hateful and half-demented grin. _You will. You'll show him what happens when he treats you like his toy._ I ran my hands through my hair, braiding the tousled strands between my fingers. _Something to play with until he loses interest, then cast away in the corner until he comes back._

I didn't know how just yet, but lying there, obsessed and steaming, I resolved to revenge myself upon him. It would require a little cleverness. It could not, after all, be something he could construe as insubordinate — not when I'd already come so far. I needed to have the high ground when I brought it all down upon him. I needed to stay chaste, angelic, and guiltless as a virgin martyr. However heavily it might weigh upon my shoulders, however much it might hurt, I had to keep the halo upon my head, bearing it gracefully like some golden scold's bridle.

My body, meanwhile, had its own ideas. All day the throbbing had been insufferably cyclical. Every time I thought I was finally rid of it, it rekindled itself like a malarial fever. By now, my misery was almost intractable. I sighed and writhed and moaned over the duvet, slowly incinerating in the flames of my own frustration.

 _Anticipation/Algolagnia..._

Even the air itself put me in agony, with its heat, its heavy, asphyxiating fingers reaching over my throat and choking me. Unless I could find some way to shatter it myself, the fever, I knew, would not break.

I suffered that way until just after midnight, when in a last act of desperation, I slipped out of bed and undressed, leaving a little trail of garments and linens on the ground as I crept my way into the bathroom. I flipped the faucet and watched the cold water shoot from the shower-head, hissing against the porcelain tiles, and over the ice-white marble of the walls.

I shivered at the edge of the stream, gradually working up the courage to step in. It shocked me, really, realizing what I was about to do to myself. It seemed so iniquitous, so profoundly unfair. Had not I suffered enough already? Was it necessary, now, to add injury to insult? Truly, any day of the week I'd rather be burned than be cold. Yet trite as it was, a cold shower was the only improvised remedy I'd ever even heard of for the embarrassing malady that had beset me. Like an electroconvulsive pulse, I hoped it might shock my body back into balance.

 _Camphor, too, can kill you. It can make you see things, and seize._

I shrieked when the water hit my skin. Each droplet pierced me like a liquid needle. It impaled me and left me pale. But little by little, my body did begin to acclimate. I breathed a little easier. I no longer felt I was falling onto a bed of nails. I shut my eyes, rotating slowly beneath the stream and worked a snowy lather of suds into my hair. I let it trickle over me in rivulets of white lace. I felt the bubbles prickling my skin as they popped. I rinsed. I trembled. I stared at the water, glistening against me like shards of glass, like diamonds, dangling from my fingertips, from my nipples, lips, and the tip of my nose.

I sighed and turned off the water, slipping out of the stall just as soon as I'd shaved my legs. I needed to extricate myself from temptation. Had I let it run much longer, there's little doubt in my mind that even the cold water, with its dull, rhythmic pulsations, may have lowered me into an unlooked-for and frostbitten climax.

Still dripping, still bare, I blew my hair dry before a beveled mirror. Even under a jet stream of hot air, I never quite managed to get warm again. The cold, I suppose, had cut into me too deeply. My teeth chattered. My shoulders shook. Worst of all, the shower itself had failed me. I was still thinking of Lucius — perhaps even more now. I was thinking of how he'd mistreated me, and of my dazed, undiminished desire to have him back. I still wanted him. I wanted him to take me. I wanted him to make me come, over and over, until my body turned to cinders and smoke.

 _Then, at least, you'd be warm, Hermione._

Those were the thoughts that had flooded my head, drowning out all the others. Like frozen water, cooling off had only made them more crystalline, more solid, voluminous, and clear. I skulked back to bed and buried myself beneath the blankets. I closed my eyes and let a black veil of sleep put me out of my misery.

The memory of how I survived the next morning and afternoon was hazy, but I seem to remember sitting at his desk for at least a dozen hours, a book straddling my nose. I don't think I quite read, per se. I just thumbed indolently through some several thousand pages, letting the words spin past me like the shadows of a magic lantern. It was an idle pursuit; a ploy to keep my hands occupied and out if trouble.

 _There's'a sinister adage about idle hands._

By nightfall, I let my eyes lose focus. I stood up from his desk straight, pretending to salvage the last dregs of my dignity — that they hadn't been washed away down the shower drain the night before. I was nearly out of the room when a harsh hiss split through the air. My heart quit beating. My face went ashen. I couldn't believe it. It was absurd — it was utterly and revoltingly absurd. It was as if he could hear me. It was as if he knew.

His face soon appeared in the flames.

"Hermione."

I sneered at him, "Mr. Malfoy."

His greeting was brisk, but mine was solid ice.

"I'm glad I caught you. I wasn't sure you'd still be in the study."

I squinted. He sounded a little breathy, as if he'd been walking somewhere in a hurry.

"I wasn't waiting," I muttered.

It was a pitiful lie, but I wasn't about to tell him the truth. I glanced down to the desk where I'd wasted away the entire afternoon for him, and at the little mound of novels I'd erected, like a sepulcher, to inter his Emily Dickinson.

"I just came in to return your book." I crossed my arms. "I guess you got lucky."

"My book," his words were clipped. "Finished reading already?"

"You told me to read, so I read." My lips grew tense. "I did everything you asked me to, Mr. Malfoy." I felt a pair of fiery red blossoms spread across my cheeks. _Everything._

There was a heavy and pregnant pause before he spoke, "You're upset." His tone dropped half an octave. It sounded as if he'd stopped in his tracks. "You're upset that I didn't call."

 _Give the man a medal._ I bit my tongue. _Nothing escapes his colossal comprehension of the wide, blue world. What acumen! What stunning percipience and wit!_

"I may be a little miffed," I murmured. "It was rude of you, wasn't it?"

"It was," he admitted. "It was conduct unbecoming of a gentleman." He paused. "But then, I've never claimed to be a gentleman, have I, Hermione?"

 _Is that true?_ My brow furrowed. _Granted… he's certainly never been especially gentle._

"Well," I breathed hotly, "are you sorry, at least?"

"No, Miss Granger. I'm not."

 _I beg your pardon?_ My blood skipped boiling and turned directly to steam.

"Would you care to know," his words were wolfish, "why I didn't call you last night? Would you like to know what kept me away?"

 _Oh, very much so. Please. Please, tell me what precisely gives you the right to treat me like shit. Impress me, Mr. Malfoy._

I seethed at him softly, "Do tell."

"The opportunity arose," his voice cooled, "to finish up much earlier out here than I'd expected. But to do so demanded my immediate and undivided attention."

"Earlier," I echoed, my frown slightly slackening. "How much earlier?"

"I can Floo home in less than an hour, Miss Granger. Be ready."

* * *

 **On a personal note, this chapter was inspired the first time my Lucius was detained on business (right before Christmas) and I was an irrational, pouty mess. So, while it may seem like Hermione was overreacting, this stuff is intense when it's happening to you.**

 **Off to update more!**

 **Lana**


	5. Chapter 5

**Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!**

 **With Lucius back, Hermione gets more than what she bargained for but ... is it ever enough?**

* * *

I stood at the vanity in the washroom, staring blankly into the mirror, debating over what precisely he meant by 'be ready'. I clenched my teeth, carefully curling my eyelashes.

There was something very ironic about preparing myself for Lucius. I could take great pains in the preparation. I could seat before a mirror and make every detail exquisite, almost flawless. In the end, he'll spoil it all. But that's the whole point, isn't it?

I'd stained my lips mauve and painted two black penumbras over my eyelids. I'd scented my wrists and throat with the perfume from a sapphire bottle, leaving the air around me redolent with jasmine, neroli and rose. The blush, as always, was redundant, but with the help of a little snow-white concealer, I turned my skin into porcelain for him, erasing every minute blemish and bump on my face.

He'd be home any minute now. By necessity, all the righteous ire in my eyes had been snuffed out by panic, by a tempestuous and pent-up desire for release, lapping like storm waves on the inside of my chest. He really hadn't allowed me time to fret over the injustice of it; he really hadn't allowed me time to do much of anything.

There were things we'd said to each other; things that were just now returning to me, haunting me as I sifted through the drawers and the dangling dresses for a pair of knickers and a brassiere. I let my towel fall to the floor. It was far from lost on me that the dress he'd had the house-elf deliver to my room was white lace, silk, and apart from its length, vaguely bridal. I stole a glance at the clock on the wall.

The clock kept ticking. With a grimace I slipped into the dress, contorting my shoulders to grab ahold of the zipper. I turned once more toward the mirror. The final product was far from flawless, but even in its foibles and its imperfections, there was no denying it — the witch in the mirror was still hauntingly sexy. And besides ... I tilted my head, still unconvinced that the graceful gamine gazing back was really me. I doubt Lucius will take too terribly long to unwrap it.

I glanced to Lucius's Dickinson, lying where I'd tossed it earlier. I wondered, in some twisted, alternative universe, what lewd and libertine paintings those verses of hers might have inspired. Anticipiation / Algolagnia. My pulse outpaced the clock, and I felt my breath begin to grow shallow.

It was time — a little past it, actually — and I'd still yet to decide where to wait for him. The foyer, I figured, would just seem too eager. Already I was essentially his pet. I didn't need him tripping over me right behind the front door. But I couldn't bring myself to go back to his study either. Over the past two days, that place in particular had all but sapped me of my sanity.

His bedroom?

I sneered at myself. As if I could be any more obvious. As if I didn't look desperate enough already. The truth was, even if I'd wanted to wait in his boudoir, reposed over his bed like some quivering maitress-en-titre, I couldn't. That door was under locking spells that I had no energy to try to break.

I decided on the front parlor. I snatched up the Dickinson from the nightstand. Beside the fire. All poised and placid. I smirked timorously. I'll read and I'll make him interrupt me. I tiptoed over toward the door. He'll think I didn't hear him come in. He'll think I hardly missed him at all.

I crept out into the corridor, trying my best to ignore the way my shoulders were already shaking, and how my balance seemed a little less steady with each step. 'Be ready.' His last command echoed darkly in my head.

My shoes clicked shrilly on the steps, and at the bottom I made a beeline for the parlor. The room was dark, but the fire was burning. I paused a moment at the threshold just to catch my breath. I stood there, staring out into the shadows, listening to the logs crackle and pop. Still panting a little, I crossed my arms, and tiptoed onward toward the flames.

Through some unholy miracle, I made it through the darkness to a little upholstered chair by the fire without crashing into anything. I sat down slowly, crossing my legs. I opened the book with no intention whatsoever to read it. I frowned at my knees. I wasn't quite satisfied. I wanted to look absolutely impeccable when he first caught sight of me.

I crossed and uncrossed my legs. My fidgeting became convulsive. I altered my posture endlessly, shifting it to-and-fro by infinitesimal degrees. I fiddled and fretted with each individual strand of my hair. I took turns smoothing out the creases in my dress, and tugging at its neckline, hoping to keep each one of its edges in precisely the right window between prudish and implicitly alluring. Finally, still less than half-satisfied, I forced myself to settle and lifted the book once more to my nose.

"What are you reading?"

I jolted upright, clasping a hand to my mouth to stifle my shriek and nearly knocked the chair off balance. The book fell splayed to the floor.

"Lucius!" I panted his name, stunned. "My God. You scared me half to death."

He stood behind me, buried somewhere in the shadows. Even squinting, I could barely make out his silhouette. But I saw his eyes. They reflected the flames, piercing through the darkness like a pair of burning stars. I shivered. I could have walked right past him there and never even known. He stepped closer to the fire, prodding the logs with the fire poker, sending a shower of orange sparks up the flue. He turned slowly, pointing its charred tip to where my book had fallen on the floor.

"Pick it up."

I felt my heart quicken. I know he meant the gesture to be menacing, but I'm not sure he realized just how much he was scaring me.

 _I won't hold back any longer_ , his warning returned to addle me once more.

Well. I quivered, reaching down between my ankles to where the Dickinson had fallen. Lucius was certainly not holding back now, was he? He set the poker aside, half of his face glowing titian in the firelight, the other half still masked in shadow.

"Good girl," he growled at me, and nodded. "Now bring it here."

I bit my lip, and began to stand, but he stopped me, his eyes still flashing in the firelight.

"No," his voice was low and rasping, little more than a rumbling whisper. "Crawl."

Crawl? My eyes widened, and my skin turned scarlet. Like? Like, on the floor? Come on, he's kidding.

I knitted my brow, ninety-nine percent certain that he couldn't be serious. There's no way. There's not a chance in hell he really expects me to do this.

It took less than a full glimpse at him, though, to send every one of my doubts up in smoke. I sank my teeth into the inside of my cheek. He wasn't kidding; he absolutely was serious. He stood stone still, waiting.

Very slowly, and without ever breaking my gaze, I slipped out of the chair and onto the floor. My skin seared beneath a layer of lace. The rug bristled against my palms and knees.

I was mortified. With every inch, I could feel another little piece of me perish, withering away beneath his wolfish glare. At the rate I was going, I doubted there'd be anything of me left by the time I reached him. I'd be a husk of myself, all razed, wrecked, and ruined.

But then when I'd come a little more than halfway, something changed. I saw a smile flicker across his lips — not a smirk, nor a leer, but an actual smile. It was such a little, fleeting thing, but a thing nonetheless that I dearly needed. It was his sign. It was the hairline chink in his dark and frost-laden armor. Whatever cruel and unrevealed intentions he might have for me, he couldn't hide it. He was happy. He was genuinely happy to see me. Maybe ecstatic. Maybe enthralled.

 _'_ _From the Old English, þræl, Hermione. To put in moral or mental bondage. To enslave.'_

I moved toward him, sliding the book along beneath my palm. My hips swayed. By a subtle swelling within his trousers, I could tell how much it pleased him to see me this way. And while it didn't allay my discomfort in the least, I'll confess: it turned me on a little, being able to watch what my degradation was doing to him.

I stopped crawling just shy of his shoes. They were damp along the edges. I narrowed my eyes. He couldn't have been watching me very long; the fire would have dried them out. I glanced up, my head just barely above his knees.

"My Hermione," he growled and fell to one knee in front of me. "You haven't any idea," he stroked my face with the back of his hand, and a chill burned its way through every nerve in my body, "you haven't any idea at all how I've missed you."

I imagine I do. I closed my eyes, melting a little more as he grazed my ear and tucked away a loose thread of hair. His lips were so close to mine. Already, I could taste him — his musk interlaced with the redolent heat of his breath. I sighed. I wanted so badly for him to kiss me. I had to keep my mouth closed, for fear I might start to salivate if let me languish much longer. He stole the book from beneath my palm. I tried not to whimper as he pulled away and stood.

"Kneel." His voice was strict, but strangely warm.

It should have been degrading, I know, but being told to kneel, I couldn't help but I couldn't help it; I did as he told me. I knelt and felt my skin begin to glow brighter. I'd yet to go down on him. He'd never let me or outright asked. Frankly, it seemed a little odd me, though not especially upsetting. I was at eye-level with his crotch now. I watched his inseam swell just a little bit tighter. I wondered if this was the moment. I bit my lip, trying not to stare as he silently fanned through the pages. I wonder how he might taste...

"You read this while I was away?"

Nervously, I nodded.

"You read my notes?"

I nodded again.

"I'm disappointed," he scolded me wryly and snapped it shut. "You shouldn't fill your head with such filth."

I tried to drop my eyes, ill at ease with his teasing, but he caught me by the chin and raised it up to face him. He wouldn't allow me to look away.

"Did you learn something, at least, Miss Granger?"

His eyes flashed as he brushed his thumb across my lower lip. I had to fight the instinctive urge to taste it — to slip some part of him inside my mouth.

I murmured, my lips softly grazing the edge of his thumb, "It seems to me that Miss Dickinson was a masochist, sir."

The flames crackled in the fireplace, and a dark shadow played across his face.

"Meaning?"

 _Anticipation / algolagnia. 'Her master stabs her more...'_

"She liked it," I breathed, giving in, and dragging my tongue along the rough edge of his thumb, "when her master made her suffer."

His jaw twitched, but he didn't stop me.

"You were telling the truth," his eyes softened slightly as he lowered my jaw. "You did everything that I asked. Didn't you?"

I closed my eyes, and gave an aspen nod. _You didn't give me much of a choice, Mr. Malfoy._

"You frustrated yourself," he left my lips open, "how many times for me, Hermione?"

 _Too many._

My throat tightened, and a warm chill rippled through my skin as he slid his hand across my cheek. Entirely too many. The tension was still inside me. I could feel it — dormant, but undiminished. Each time I'd touched myself for him, the coil wound tighter, choking me, constricting until I could barely breathe. Now that he was here, touching me with his own hands, it was only matter of time before the entire spindle either unraveled, or snapped.

"Too many."

He leered and loosed his cravat, "Did you come?"

The word made me quiver. Do you really have to ask? I gazed between his fingers to the strained, gray wool overlying his fly. Had he freed himself, it might have spanned the whole space between us — pointing at me, passing judgement. He waited. He watched me. I saw him shrug off his jacket, and unfasten his cuffs, all without severing his stare.

"You'll understand why I'm asking," he rolled his sleeves to the elbow. "I abstained while I was away from you."

Abstained? A deep crease cut across my brow.

"I just want to know whether you were suffering alongside me. So I will ask again." He sank once more to one knee. I think my skin was paler than the lace overlying it, "Did you, Hermione? Or did you not?"

I tried to answer. I wanted to — I wanted to vaunt how abused I'd been in his absence, how I'd almost martyred myself to obey him. Except once. However, after the torture I'd endured since, it didn't really count. Still, I was terrified of being caught in a lie. My mouth refused to open and my tongue refused to utter deceit. Almost imperceptibly, I shook my head. He sighed and let his hands slide down from my shoulders, clasping my wrists in his hands.

"Listen closely," his words burned against my ear. "I'm going to bind your hands. I won't untie them until you come."

Slowly, firmly, he drew my wrists together. My entire body seemed to vibrate and purr at his touch. He wrapped a black ribbon from his hair around them. He did it so quickly. I felt my face flush, and half of my million arrector pili muscles tighten up as the silk snaked over my skin. He wrapped them once, and then twice.

"You'll come for me — three times should be sufficient, don't you think?" He cinched the knot.

 _Three times?_

My heart quit beating. Three? Three? I didn't believe him. Really, I didn't believe it was even possible, and if he tried to make it so, I think I was all but certain I'd die before he was done with me. On sheer, self-preservative instinct, I shook my head. I whimpered and thrashed against him. He held me fast, clasping a hand over my mouth, and waited for me to exhaust myself in the struggle. I'd like to think it took a little longer than he expected, but by and by, it was inevitable. He broke me, and with my panting still muffled by his palm, I fell still.

Looking back, I suppose the humiliation of that moment was probably worse than the fear. He'd bound my hands. I'd allowed it. And now, until he chose to make me otherwise, I was weak. I was vulnerable. I was helpless as a sparrow with clipped wings.

He didn't even need both arms to control me.

I struggled more. I whimpered and writhed. It didn't make a difference. He kept taunting me with the twin contradictions of his touch, caressing my face like a lover with one hand. With the other, he held me silent and still.

Lucius let his lips track over the vein-stricken edge of my neck. "Tell me, do you remember the color of your Valentine roses, Hermione?"

My roses? I turned my eyes to him, or I tried to anyhow. His hold on me dearly limited my options.

He spun my face gently toward the flames. "Do you remember what happens when you say it?"

It stops. Everything stops if I say 'red'.

I stared into the smoldering embers of the fire. I could feel him behind me, hard as stone between my tied and trembling hands. I nodded.

"Good girl," he growled at me again, neither grinning nor glaring, and dragged his free hand lightly across my chest. "You mustn't forget it."

With bated breath and eyes cast low, I watched him. I watched him grasp each one of my breasts, kneading them firmly beneath his palm. My nipples tightened and started to tingle. He made me feel so tender and full — almost twice as heavy in his hands. Slowly, like a creeping tendril of ivy, I watched him trace out the curve of my waist and wrap his hand inward around my thigh. I watched it linger there, then vanish beneath the lace-trimmed hem of my dress.

"I'm going to let you speak now, Hermione." At last, he loosened his hold over my mouth. Through a subtle pulsation in his trousers, I could feel his heartbeat quicken. "Is there anything at all that you'd care to say to me?"

There was. I swear, there was plenty, but he never gave me the chance. The moment I might have spoken, he stroked me softly through the silk. As always, he was treating me unfairly. Every game that we played was rigged in his favor. But this, somehow, seemed worse. He'd asked me to speak and then set me on fire without a trial. With my wrists pinioned behind me, with his hand gliding deeper between my thighs, I couldn't possibly be expected to defend myself; no more than I could be tortured under Cruciatus Curse and enjoy it.

Again through the silk, his hand grazed my clitoris, and I think I nearly collapsed in his arms. He caressed me slowly, deeply, as if smoothing a crease out of stone. There was dew blooming in the corners of my eyes. There was dew on my lips. I pressed my hips hard into his hand, grinding myself shamelessly against him. Before us, the fire burned hellishly in the hearth. I still couldn't tell him the color of the roses. I couldn't tell him the color of anything. All I could do was moan as he slowly slid his fingers beneath the band of my knickers, and sounded the rose-wet embrasure between my thighs.

"Last chance." Lucius let his lips brush against mine. Each breath that I drew was laced, lethally, with the intoxicating taste of him, and with his scent. "Speak now."

I was barely breathing. I closed my hands around the contour of him, convulsing in tandem with his touch. His hand sank deeper, and a few limpid tears escaped along my cheeks. Already, I was close — so terribly, terribly close to breaking. I could hear a whole labyrinth of hairline cracks splitting through the long axes of my bones. A moment more, and I'd surely shatter, like glass.

"More," I moved my lips, but my voice was so thin, so winded, it was impossible that he could have actually heard me. "Please, I need more."

He said nothing. He didn't need to. The flash of icy fire in his eyes said more, said it more clearly, than the words of any living language ever could. He exhaled over my throat. He slowed and strengthened his caresses. He leaned his head a hair's breadth closer to kiss me. And I came.

It snuck up on me, really. I hardly knew what was happening before the first spasm nearly snapped me in half. Heat lightning, I think, is all I can say to describe it. As through two warm electrodes, a shock shot through me, arcing between the place where his lips pressed against mine, and where his hand stroked over the most tender reaches of my clitoris, and my pussy. I might have screamed aloud had he let me, but he kept me quiet; all but silenced by his kiss, convulsing voicelessly, electrically, against the rhythmic undulations of his hand. And when the ripples inside me gradually receded, he let me sink, still quivering, to the floor.

I laid there, panting, prostrate, right between him and the flickering edge of the fire. I squeezed my thighs together, empty and already aching.

I couldn't decide. I couldn't decide whether to smile, or cry. My hands were still lashed. My hair was disheveled and dangling over my eyes. I couldn't speak. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't even wipe my own tears off my face. But lying there, even in my virginal, snow-white gown, I knew that I was anything but innocent. He combed his hand through my hair, tucking it back behind my ear, and stroked my jawline gently.

He growled at me, "That's one."

One? All the blood in my body ran lips still sealed, I moaned, shying away from his hand as he stroked my face once more. One? My brow creased, and my teeth began to chatter. He really was going to kill me tonight.

"You could stop me, Hermione." Lucius rose, burying me alive beneath his shadow. "You know precisely what to say."

No, sir. I quivered, and kept my eyes toward the floor. No, I don't. I never did. And I doubt I ever will. His touch had split me in two. I had no desire whatsoever to be tortured. But I also didn't want him to stop. There was a schism was underway between the angelic and devilish hemispheres of my head, but it was clear to me, as it must have been clear to him, which side was certain to conquer the other. I don't think it meant I was a masochist. I wasn't. The truth was, I'd already suffered more than my fair share while he was away. To leave me alone now — to leave me inviolate, and undone — it would have been its own more intangible, more intolerable sort of torture.

He cocked his head wolfishly. "You'll make a tyrant of me yet, Miss Granger. Tonight you'll be mine completely. In every way. Do you understand?"

My eyes widened, gazing out into the flames. All his. His slave?

I stifled a gasp as he hoisted me upright onto my knees. Timidly, and starting from the stitched leather soles of his shoes, I raised my eyes along the length of him.

"My darling. These eyes!" His words softened as he wiped a wet streak of mascara from my cheek. "These eyes will be the death of me."

I blushed and let them fall once more to the floor.

"Perhaps," I murmured, hoping against hope to extinguish just a single iota of the tension building back up inside me, "If looks could kill, Mr. Malfoy."

"I believe they can." The devilish wizard raised his hand to his lips, fixing his glare as he tasted each of the fingertips he'd used to touch me and to wipe away my tears. "But not tonight."

I shuddered and looked on nervously as he unknotted his necktie, slipping it free from his throat. "Tonight," he whispered darkly. "I'll have to keep them out of sight."

My skin went white as he slid his cravat over the bridge of my nose and wrapped its ends around the back of my head. "Out of sight," he drew it taut, "out of mind."

With two stern tugs, the world around me went black. I wasn't prepared for this — not at all. I grew dizzy as a mixture of dread, adrenaline, and liquid panic began pouring into my bloodstream. I'll confess that being controlled by him excited me more than I'd ever care to utter aloud. I'll even confess that in the midst my swirling void of vertigo, some deviant moiety of me remained hopelessly and helplessly aroused. But the scales were sliding in the wrong direction.

To be tied by him was hazardous enough. It was all the vulnerability I was emotionally prepared to tolerate. To be tied and blind was just too much. It was reckless endangerment. With my luck, in my condition, I figured the moment he made me stand up, I'd trip over the edge of the rug and probably impale myself on the fire poker.

"I'm taking you upstairs now, Hermione," Lucius said, stroking my face. "I'm far from finished with you tonight."


	6. Chapter 6

My head was spinning, and my cheeks began to glow as he spoke. I clenched and unclenched my fists, checking whether the ribbon had cut off my circulation. I didn't think I could move one millimeter, much less trudge upstairs. Not like this ... Not surprisingly though, I was very much mistaken once again tonight.

Without further warning, Lucius slid his arm underneath me and hoisted me entirely off the ground. I squealed, but could do nothing to stop him. He held me high in his arms, cradled against him. I felt the heat dissipate as he turned us away from the fire. I felt the musculature of his chest and shoulders, shifting reciprocally as he started to walk. Little by little, and only after I was absolutely certain he wouldn't drop me, I felt my terror dissolve into a timid and half-hidden grin. I nestled my head against him.

 _Don't let me fall, Lucius!_ I silently pleaded.

His gait changed, and I could only assume that we'd started on the stairs. I tried to count them, but my head lolled dizzily at what I took to be the second landing, and I really couldn't say with any certainty just how far we had come. If he'd intended to disorient me with the blindfold, then he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. Already, I'd lost track of the steps, and by the time we finally came to rest, he could have carried me clear to the moon. I would hardly have known the difference.

He let me down softly. There was a warm, bristling rug beneath my feet, and my knees nearly gave out underneath me as a door latched shut behind us. I spun around, breathless, searching out somewhere in the darkness.

"Where are we?"

"A bedroom." His voice rose up behind me, his words singing the nape of my neck, "My bedroom, Hermione."

My breath hitched again as he grasped my zipper, drawing it down slowly, exposing to the open air my shoulder blades, my spine, and the geminate dimples just above my backside. His hands swept over my hips and, like a shred of tattered gift wrap, my dress fell in rumpled heap to the floor. Logically, I suppose I knew in that moment that I was nearly naked. But somehow the blindfold seemed to spare me from the lion's share of shame and cheek-searing indignity that should normally have accompanied that knowledge. There was something about not being able to see him, not being forced to bear the brunt of that icy and ominous intention in his eyes. I'm not sure if it made me any braver, but it certainly mad me more reckless.

Again, I felt the throb of him as he stepped closer, pressing against me from behind. My lips twitched. I thought of the bulge I glimpsed earlier in his trousers earlier and strained to enclose him in my palms. Profanely, I wondered whether I could make him larger still. I leaned my head back, resting it against his shoulder, relishing his lips as they moved their way down my throat.

As best I could manage with my hands still restrained, I grasped hold of his clothed cock, moving my fingers in several slow, undulating strokes along his length. With each one, his hold around me grew slightly tighter, and his kisses incrementally more vicious. I wetted my lips. I wanted it. I did — though it all but amazed me to realize it. I was craving it. Even blind, even bound, I wanted nothing more in that moment than to kneel down before him, and take his cock into my mouth. I wanted to taste him, to swallow him whole if I could.

"Mr. Malfoy," I breathed, and squeezed him tighter, "may I?"

His words were cool, "May you what, Miss Granger?"

I flushed red as blood. He didn't need to ask. He knew exactly what I was asking him. I'm sure he did. But he had to be cruel. He had to make me say it aloud, to humiliate me, and to make me suffer.

"May I—" I sank my teeth into my cheek, stunned by what I was about to ask him. More than that, I meant it and was probably prepared to beg for the pleasure. "May I suck your cock ... please?"

No sooner had I uttered the first syllable than I felt him turn to solid stone in my hands. Still, Lucius kept his voice measured, almost aloof. "You're asking to perform a fellatio on me, Hermione Granger?"

I bit a bit harder and forced a rigid half-nod. A bitterly long silence followed, and I felt my brow begin to furrow. It was absolutely unfathomable to me that this was a decision warranting his deliberation. For just a moment though, I really believed that he might spurn me.

When finally he broke the quiet, his words were cold as evening frost, "Very well." Lucius swept me softly to my knees, "Your desires are your orders, Hermione."

 _Be very careful what you wish for._ I shivered and laid my cheek against his hand as he traced over the edge of my jaw.

"You'll do as I tell you," he snarled.

I nodded, quivering.

"You don't hesitate, or deviate. You don't so much as breathe without my permission."

I nodded again, growing more nervous with each word he uttered.

"Open your mouth." He slid my knees wide apart on the floor. "Stay straight and still."

Shaking, I obeyed. I straightened my posture, as I brought myself to attention beneath him. I heard him expel a tense breath somewhere above me and felt him drag his thumb along the trembling, vermillion border of my lips.

"Bend forward. From your hips." He took his hand away. "Come as close as you can to me without falling, Hermione."

Again, I obeyed. I leaned out blindly toward the sound of his voice, stopping only when the muscles of my stomach and torso seemed ready to split apart and catch fire from the friction. My mouth was still open, my eyes still shut.

"Good girl." Lucius touched my chin, drawing it just a little lower. I heard a metallic, telltale clinking sound and a slow slithering of leather as he unfastened his belt before me.

"Now keep still. Do not move your head. Do not move an inch. Do I make myself perfectly clear, Hermione?"

I made a movement that was neither a nod, nor a shake of my head. My center of gravity was too far forward. One sudden movement would have been enough to topple me straight into his legs. Already my body was on fire in the struggle to remain upright; however, the hunger for him was undiminished and grew only more dire, more dear as his hands swept over my breasts.

"Yes," I whispered softly.

I stayed stone still for him, and parted my lips. They lingered there, open and unmet, as if awaiting some unrequited kiss. Psyche revived by Cupid's Kiss. If she could have kept just her eyes closed... I suppressed a shudder. If she could have just done as she was told.

I heard him move closer. Lucius wasted no time. Barely had I drawn another full breath before I felt him glide over my lips, over my tongue, and back into the deeper reaches of my throat. Holy Merlin! He was monstrous; the sheer expanse of him never ceased to astound me. My mouth was drawn wide around his circumference, and I had to fight back the reflexive urge to gag. He did it slowly, steadily filling me almost to his very hilt.

He pulled back, and I gasped through flared nostrils, breathing in the scent of him, and swallowing the subtle taste he'd left on my tongue. His flavor was saline, just slightly acetic. I shivered. Much as each one may have provoked my senses, it was neither that truly intoxicated me. Rather, it was merely feeling what I'd done to him. It was wrapping my head around how possessing my body in this way could so metamorphose a portion of his. Each tumescent millimeter of him was for me. All for me.

Lucius thrust into me once more and withdrew. He did it again, and then again, sinking each time just a little bit deeper. Each time I had to work just a little bit harder to breathe. My jaw throbbed. My abdominals burned. My neck began to cramp. I was just on the edge of wholly rethinking my foolish request, when finally, I felt it. I felt my nether-lip brush, just barely, the velvet-smooth skin of his base.

Unreal.

A warm wave swelled between my legs. It shocked me to realize that I'd actually done it, that I could take his entirety into my mouth, and somehow still manage not to suffocate. It isn't at all easy to explain, but it made me feel used in a way that was almost pleasant, that didn't seem to cheapen me; in a way that almost —almost — made me feel proud. Even so, I couldn't stay there. Like any jagged and snow-laden summit, the air was too thin at the top to tarry very long, and admire the view. I'd planted my little flag in the ice. It was time now to descend.

I waited and waited longer. He wasn't retreating. He held me there, penetrating clear past the back of my tongue. I stifled another urge to retch, more urgent than the first, and still he didn't relent. Beneath the blindfold, my eyes began to water, and a surge of panic shot through me as I felt him wrap his hand around the back of my head.

 _No. No, no. No, God, please, I can't._

His hold was firm. He wouldn't. He wouldn't dare. But he would dare. He did. With a finite, but forceful shove, he thrust me down even further, letting the musky, silken hairs surrounding the root of him nettle the edges of my nose. It was a strange sensation, and I won't say that it didn't hurt. It did. I couldn't neither choke, nor swallow. I couldn't even breathe. He'd sealed my throat completely, and I could feel my tears starting to stain my blindfold.

"Remember, do not move an inch," he breathed huskily.

I tried my very damnedest to keep calm as he let go of my head and lowered his hands once more to my chest. I tried to keep quiet as he grasped hold of me and firmly began kneading my breasts. But there was only so much I could control. Barely an inch below the end of him, I felt my vocal cords tighten as a low, muffled moan moved over them, resounding inside me like the song of some mournful canary, trapped in the tiny, trembling cage of my chest.

At the slightest sound of my suffering, he stiffened.

 _Sadist._

The desperate truth was, I liked it too. I liked it more than I had any right to, and a steamy sliver of me couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to come like this. Kneeling. Silenced. Lucius Malfoy's cock lodged in my throat. But however much his caresses and his ingress may have stirred me, his tease, I knew, was time-limited. My eyes were overflowing. My chest seared. I think I was starting to teeter on the cusp of unconsciousness when finally he allowed me to breathe. Shrilly, I gasped and collapsed against his leg as he withdrew, panting.

"Sweet Merlin," he spoke, incinerating me as he set his hand on my temple, "how you'll suffer for me."

I felt a warm tear escape from beneath my blindfold, and he brushed it lightly away from my cheek. "These lips. This skin. These tears," he rasped. "You obsess me, Hermione Granger. You drive me utterly mad."

I, too, was mad for him. I had to be. My chest was still heaving. He'd nearly allowed me to asphyxiate. Still, I wasn't afraid of him ... still, I ached for more. Lucius reached down to unfasten my brassiere, and instinctively I knew that I wouldn't be able to obey his command to keep still any longer. It was a constant struggle for me, and a losing one, as he tore the straps away, sweeping his hands over my pale and now-naked chest.

I panted harder. I could sense him there, pulsating just beyond the edge of my lips. I felt his fingertips graze over nipples, teasing them in tandem. Without intending for them to do so, my hips began to sway futilely, reflexively, against the empty and unfeeling air. His caresses quickened. I wetted my lips. I whimpered. I couldn't do it. I couldn't keep it in any longer. I just couldn't. I needed it. I needed him — all of him — even more than I needed air in my lungs. With one deep breath, and only the dimmest, dizziest apprehensions of the fallout, I broke my statuesque stillness, and let my lips slide along the length of him.

It surprised him. That much, at least, was absolutely clear. By the sound he made, you'd have thought I put a knife blade in his spleen. His growl was guttural. His hands dug sharply into the tingling skin of my breasts. Still, I didn't stop, and still, he didn't stop me. I went further, spurred by his implicit permission. I ran my tongue down to the soft, furrowed seam of him, and back up again over the underside of his shaft. My lips wrapped around his head, and I felt his hold on me tighten as I drew him in slowly, so very slowly, clear to the quivering, pink folds of my vocal cords. He shuddered above me, and started to quake.

"That's enough!" he snarled, his words cracking like clear thunder. "Was I ... was I not clear enough, Miss Granger?"

I couldn't answer him. I wouldn't. But I strained my wrists, and curled my fingers, sucking him into me even as I pulled away and gave a faint nod without letting him go. He was clear. Clear as glass. But having begun, I knew there was no way to stop myself — not with the way he was touching me, not with the way he'd made me languish, suffer, and stay still. I breathed feverishly through my nostrils, and without wasting a moment more, took him again into my throat.

"Damn it, Hermione! Damn it, enough!" Lucius clutched me harder. I could feel him splitting like a glacier. "I'm— I'm going to come."

My lips smacked as I let him slip free. I raised my chin up, pretending I could see him through the silk and struggled hard to suppress my smirk. "Not without my permission, Mr. Malfoy."

The moment that followed was so silent, I could almost hear the embers a floor beneath us, still crackling like half-smothered hellfire. In more ways than one, it was a slip of the tongue, and I was probably more stunned than he was that I'd actually had the nerve to say it. That snide sort of bon mot was supposed to stay sequestered in the very lowest, snarkiest conclaves of my head.

Lucius laughed darkly. "This mouth." He pressed his thumb to my lips, at once hushing me. He let his hand fall a little lower and clasped it firmly around my neck. I whimpered as he pulled me up off the floor and onto the very tips of my toes. "Mark me, my little one, you'll swallow your words before I'm through with you."

* * *

 **Mr. Malfoy doesn't mess around, does he?**

 **Thank you all for reading! More on the way!**

 **Lana**


	7. Chapter 7

This time, at least, I had the sense and the serenity to stay silent. Lucius kissed me fiercely, and I tried to kiss back. His grip was getting tighter, and I was already starting to choke when he raised me still higher. Even en pointe, my toes just barely brushed the floorboards. I coughed dizzily. Terror was once again poised to overtake me when he tore his lips away, and let me collapse, face-down, onto what I could only imagine was the cool, sleek surface of his bed.

 _His bed..._ He held me down, and a chill slithered through my spine and along the backs of my thighs at the thought of it. _Where he sleeps. Where he dreams. Where he'd like to make me swallow my words._

Even in the very midst of my physical discomfort, I found myself wondering how long my scent was likely to linger on his linens. I curled my toes tightly over the coverlet, hoping to haunt him for a month or more. The texture was familiar, but for the life of me I couldn't place it. I was so distracted momentarily that I barely noticed as he snapped my knickers down over my ankles, and mounted the bed overtop of me. He pressed his palm into the blushing curve of my are, and I buried my face still deeper.

"Twenty." He squeezed, breathing icily into my ear. "I'm going to fuck you, Hermione Granger, and I'm going to spank you twenty times." Lucius let go, and slowly, sternly, drew my pale legs wide apart on the bed. "Start counting."

Before the first blow fell, I was already wincing. The way that he'd grasped me was neither seductive, nor flirtatious. It was meant, very clearly, to cause me pain. Before it fell, I began counting, hoping to steel myself, hoping to keep myself from screaming when finally he did start. When it happened my lips tore open, and my entire body convulsed, but I definitely didn't scream. I didn't even feel him strike me. That first blow was obscured, entirely, for at precisely the same moment, he thrust himself into me, splitting me open from behind, piercing me deeper than I think I'd ever believed possible.

I gasped, overcome by the feeling of it — by the fullness, rigor, and totality with which he dominated me. If somewhere inside my body an immortal soul still resided, it too must have been pinioned by him, pierced through. It too must have been weeping, with its legs spread wide, readying itself to be fucked into oblivion. He groaned darkly, jaggedly, as he slowly withdrew. I breathed in deeply, hoping to hold that sound inside me. For him to leave me, even for a moment, was like having my beating heart rent from my chest.

Lucius sank himself into me again, and again, struck me hard across the bottom. I heard it — the earsplitting 'snap' reverberating clear across the room. I shrieked this time, and bit down onto the blanket, and felt an electrical, red throb radiating up through my rear. He didn't stop. Every single time that he spanked me, he tempered the sting with another maddening thrust into the core of me. The feeling was as strange as it was enslaving. It was every bit as sharp as pain — it had that immediacy, that same intensity; yet somehow it was void of whatever pernicious _pièce de résistance_ that would otherwise compel me to suffer, and ache. Each stroke struck me as a wave. Each time that it did, the ripple went deeper, until his blows seemed to echo into my teeth, lips, and toes.

I bit down deeper and deeper into the material of his bedspread, calling on every sliver of self-control I could conjure up to aid me in holding it all inside. At ten strokes, I was trembling. I felt my eyes water. At fifteen, I was catatonic, battered like a waxen rag-doll beneath him. At sixteen, I started coming. I cried out. I slackened, and tightened, and slackened again. My pain and my paroxysms changed nothing — not his pacing, nor his depth and angulation. He went on, striking my bottom and impaling my body, utterly ignoring my moans of desperation — the hysterical spasms of my hips against his. It dawned on me then, somewhere in the fiery fog of that climax, that now perhaps more than ever before this wizard rendered me literally and abjectly helpless. Agency was an illusion. I'd swallowed my words whole. But in the interest of absolute and abasing honesty, as that realization swiftly sank in, I believe I came just a little bit harder because of it.

By the time his final stroke fell, I was shivering and just barely beginning to float back down into my body. I heard him expel a long, gravel-laden sigh somewhere above me, and felt his limbs buckle slightly as he slowly slid himself out, and left me. His bare skin pressed warmly against mine. He too was breathing heavily, and I tasted perspiration on his lips as he twisted my chin for a kiss.

"That's—" he rasped, "that's two, Hermione."

That I myself was shattered was hardly shocking. It took so little to wreck me, and he'd already put me through so much. But his own exhaustion caught me off guard. Normally, I'm pretty sure the strength and the sheer cardiopulmonary stamina he possessed could run circles around mine several hundred times over. I strained my arms, and tried to grasp hold of him, in part because I wanted proof of how potently these abuses had aroused him, but mostly because I wasn't yet ready to give him up. Lucius sighed as my fingertips found him, and a deep crease cut across my brow. Granted, he wasn't soft — not by any stretch of the imagination — but he was no longer stone-hard for me either.

"Is there..." I bit my lip, terrified of offending him, but terrified twice more that I'd somehow fallen short of his enigmatic expectations, "is something wrong?"

"Wrong?" he growled, his hand grazing softly over my throbbing backside. "Certainly not. Why do you ask?"

I didn't quite buy it. I tightened my grip and felt him enervate a little further in my hands. "Did I not please you?"

He chuckled darkly, and I let go of him, embarrassed. I didn't understand why he was laughing. He interlaced our fingers. "You please me too much. With that little stunt of yours — I couldn't help it. I came the moment I entered you. On the very first thrust."

My eyes grew wide beneath the blindfold. "You did?"

"I did." He laid a chaste kiss on each of my shoulder blades. "Though it pains me to admit it."

My lips curled into a smirk over the soft fabric, and against my better judgment, I began to giggle.

"Does my impotence amuse you, Miss Granger?"

He ran his teeth roughly over the nape of my neck. I giggled harder, and squirmed as he teased and tickled me, running his fingertips airily over my flanks and along the tender, glowing edge of my arse.

"No, sir," I snickered, struggling to catch my breath. "So, what now?"

"Have patience. There are men who need a full three days to resurrect themselves, I doubt I'll be more than three minutes. But it is fascinating, isn't it?" he lowered his voice and drew me closer. "How much more resilient your body is than mine."

"Excuse me?" I squinted.

"As a man, Hermione," he explained, his slight stubble tickling my flesh, "it doesn't matter how much the sight of you may arouse me — nor your taste, the softness of your skin, your scent. If I've had you even once, I'm doomed to these degrading three minutes of impuissance. But you..."

He put his face against my tangled hair, and breathed deeply. "There is a neural reflex of your ears. It guards them against sounds intense enough to harm you. There's a reflex for the muscles of your arms, and your legs. It keeps them from tearing in two when you try to move something too heavy. But here," Lucius grasped my hips and swiveled me over onto my back. I gasped shrilly as he ran his hand between my legs, "for your pussy, and for your clitoris, there's nothing. No intrinsic switch or fuse to protect you. Even just seconds afterward." He let his lips travel the length of my throat as he spoke. I whimpered, and felt my skin begin to sizzle, and sear.

He continued to speak, "You could come, if I let you. I could force it from you. And you — you poor, ravaged little witch — could do nothing to stop me." His lips descended to my chest, and all the air in my lungs turned to steam. "Nothing, Hermione. You are mine. My possession. My obsession. I could have you come for me until you forget how to breathe. And with your last, tearful breath, you would thank me."

My toes curled tight as a coiled wires as he let the tip of his tongue glide lower, threatening to cross the tingling, red Rubicon of my areola. I prayed he wouldn't. I'm scarcely exaggerating when I say that sensation may have ended me. I'd never understood why exactly, but amid the wreckage and the settling dust of my orgasms, for nearly a full quarter of an hour afterward, my nipples always remained exquisitely tender. At that particular moment, even a gentle draft could have left me rent reeling. His tongue, I knew, would be nothing short of knife blade. I trembled more and more violently as he approached, until at the last critical moment, he froze.

"Your chest. It's very sensitive, isn't it?" Lucius breathed coolly and raised his head. "More so than most women."

I flushed red, relieved by that rare moment of reprieve. "I couldn't really say for certain."

"No. I suppose you couldn't."

Faintly, I felt him stroke the furthest perimeters of my breasts, tracing their curvatures over my breastbone and along the knobby edges of my ribs.

"I imagine they've always been imperative in the way you experience pleasure," Lucius speculated. "Perhaps on par with your clitoris? I wonder have you ever come merely from having them touched?"

I bit my lip, wishing now more than ever that my hands were free, that I could cross them, and at least attempt to guard myself from his predaceous gaze.

The stubble of his chin bristled above my pubic bone. "Tell me, Hermione. I must hear it the truth of it."

I breathed deeply, trying to keep calm as he idled his way even lower. I squirmed as I answered him, "Once. During the Yule Ball. My date was such a gentleman all night."

His lips brushed my inner thigh, and I turned my head from side-to-side, trying helplessly to hide my face in the comforter.

"Go on."

My teeth chattered, and my breath grew thin. I couldn't believe he would torture like this, and still make me continue with the recollection. Each time that his lips touched me, my memories misted over, and became lost in the fog.

"At the end of the night, he kissed me goodnight. Then he just sort of ... kept kissing me."

Lucius raised his head. "You kissed him back?"

I nodded timidly. "I did. I liked it. I liked him. And he'd been so nice to me all night." I caught my breath before he returned to tease my other thigh. "I think we snogged for maybe ten minutes. He backed me up against the wall. Right there, before the entrance to my dormitory, he touched my waist at first. He was testing the waters, I guess. But he started moving up, and I didn't try to stop him."

"Did you want him to stop, Hermione?"

I could feel the heat of his breath, blowing sweet and dark across the tender folds of my vulva. I shook my head. "No. Maybe. I'm honestly not sure. I was so young." It was impossible to think with Lucius hovering there. His breath was a pale fog on the cold, frosted windows of my mind.

"When we were kissing," I spoke softly, "I was thinking of what I should say to him afterwards. I wasn't ready to do anything more, at any rate; nevertheless, I wasn't sure how to part company after such intimacy. But once his fingers glided over my nipples, I wasn't thinking of anything anymore. My mind. It just went blank."

"So you came," Lucius spoke darkly, and I felt the bed frame shift as he rolled over and stood up.

I nodded again, embarrassed, and maybe a little masochistically disappointed by his sudden and unexpected retreat. "It ... um ... sort of snuck up on me all at once. Right as he slipped his hand beneath my dress." I turned my head toward the sound of his voice. "Honestly, I didn't even know what was happening."

I heard a drawer slide open at the bedside and snap shut. Lucius sank back into bed overtop of me, laying a light kiss on my throat.

"You knew," he said coolly. "You mustn't lie to me, Miss Granger."

"I had an inkling," I murmured. "But it was my first one, Lucius. My first one ever. And I was mortified when I figured it out." My voice quavered dryly, "I thought I must be some sort of freak. I don't even want to imagine what he was thinking."

"I understand how those formative humiliations can sting. And I know how it must hurt you to relive it just now, but truly I could not imagine a better first climax for you."

I frowned. "But I sometimes wondered if it meant something was wrong with me. Everyone always scoffs when a woman orgasms in such a way in romances or films. It's not normal, is it?"

"I'm hardly the person to speak to of what's normal, Hermione," Lucius said, tugging at the knot on my blindfold, tightening it, and smoothed out a crease over the bridge of my nose. "Either way, I suspect you're going to enjoy what happens now."

I shuddered as a cool, soft coil of something dropped onto my belly, and I felt him drape its prickling ends over my ribs.

"What is it?" I tried hard to keep my voice steady.

"Latigo," he replied, "A sort of saddle leather. Very soft. Very strong."

 _Saddle leather?_ My brow furrowed.

"What is the purpose of it?" My question was glib, but my body was stiff. I couldn't even begin to imagine what he intended to do with it nor, for that matter, what he intended to do with me. He drew the strap taut overtop of me.

"I'm going to tie this around your chest, Hermione. Tighter than you might expect."

I tried not to whimper as he slipped the first loop around my back.

"It stifles circulation in your veins. Blood floods the tissue. Your breasts will swell. And all the little nerve endings in your nipples," he cinched the strap, and with one, gentle jerk on the knot between my breasts, pulled my entire torso up off the bed, "they'll change the way they fire for a while. They'll become more sensitive. More raw. Now say that you want me to stop, Hermione." He kissed me fiercely and let me fall once more across the mattress. "Say it. Or say nothing at all."

As was my wont, I chose the latter. To answer him would have been impossible. What's worse, he was right. Already, I could feel my breasts swelling, throbbing, growing heavy, edematous, and full. I felt him lower his body over mine, our bare skin meeting, mirroring like Narcissus and his libidinous reflection in the water. Lucius laid his hands upon my breasts, lightly grazing my nipples, and even through the blindfold, I think I saw every color and hue of the visible spectrum blossom before me simultaneously. He stroked them, slowly, softly, and my mind went black.

It felt like nothing else; nothing I had ever experienced before, and was only intensified, only made more maddening, by the unnerving knowledge that I could do absolutely nothing to stop him. I might have moaned. I might have stayed silent. Quite honestly, I couldn't tell. My body, truly, was no longer mine. He had claimed it, enslaved it. He'd brought me utterly under his dominion and made me his own. If somewhere inside my head a sentient mind still resided, it was only because he gave it leave to do so. It was only because it pleased him to see me still struggling for control.

"Pray if you like tonight, Miss Granger," he rasped at me, and spread my legs wide beneath him before returning to torment my chest. "But pray to me. Until I tell you otherwise, I am your lord, and your master. Your God."

I didn't nod, and it didn't matter. He wasn't asking me for my consent. He was merely delineating my reality, my private purgatory, and before I could even open my mouth to breathe, like a dew-kissed blossom, a dehiscent wound, my body opened up for him once more, and he pierced me.

The steadiness, the withdrawn austerity with which he'd taken me earlier was entirely gone. He fucked me fiercely, thrusting and thrusting, shoring up his grasp on the leather straps that entrapped and constricted my chest, and drawing on them to drive me still harder, still deeper onto his stake. I was silent no longer. Whatever modicum of modesty had momentarily sealed my lips was torn away in the tumult. I was moaning, wailing, sobbing at times, and still he didn't stop. I was a mess, I imagine, but I couldn't help myself. I couldn't help anything. The sensation was just too cutting, too intense, and worsened incrementally with each passing moment.

Lucius kissed me cruelly. He held me down. He made me suffer, and he made me like it. More than once, I screamed, uncertain of whether I was in ecstasy or in pain each time that he swept his hand across my chest. My thighs quivered. I was losing consciousness, nearly decerebrate, and monstrously close to coming.

"Please!" My moan was breathless, desperate, and weak. "Please, Lucius, I'm begging you."

He fucked me still fiercer, and snarled, "You're begging for what, Miss Granger?"

Beneath the blindfold, my eyes were weeping as I raised them skyward. "Please. Please, just let me. I can't. I don't. I just—"

Lucius snatched up the straps over my chest, twisting them tighter, and hoisted me up against him. The sheer steam of his breath could have curled my eyelashes and left two blistering burns on each of my lips.

"Say it, Hermione. Tell me what you want."

"Please!" I gasped, my voice splitting open into a sob. "Please, please, please, let me come, Lucius."

He kissed me softly and sank his teeth into my lips. "Hold your breath for me." His voice dropped low to a stone-blue whisper, "Open your eyes."

He reached up to my temple, tearing the blindfold away, and all at once, I saw him. I saw the crimson of his lips, the flashing, wolfish white of his teeth. I saw his strong, broad shoulders above me, and the shadows of the room cutting cold slashes across his face. I even saw my own eyes — wide open and terrified — reflected in the spangled ice-gray and black of his leer.

"Come." Like a kiss of death, he breathed out the word onto my lips. They opened for him, drawing in silently the air he exhaled, distending my chest to the point of implosion.

I came. I came, and I came, and I came once more. I died every time. I died, and he quickened me, only to kill me all over again. What he was doing to me, what was happening to my body evades description. But by the pulverizing pulsations of his hips against mine, by the tension in his jaw, and the tempest in his eyes, I was certain from the start that he was perishing right along with me.

It was one, two, and then three discreet peaks, each one still more terrorizing than the last; each one breaking apart only long enough for me to breathe out a guttural wail and gasp again for more air. This Pureblood wizard shattered me, left me in tatters. There came a point at which I actually felt I dissociated from my body for a while, and floated away into the air. It sounds like lunacy, but it's true. From that ghostly and voyeuristic vantage, I swear I could remember gazing down at the two of us, luridly admiring the rhythmic furling and unfurling of his back, his shoulders, and his burnished backside.

I suppose it didn't end all at once, but little by little, it did finally diminish and die out. It had to. I would have expired of exhaustion, of dehydration, of muscle death and rhabdomyolysis had it been allowed to endure much longer. My eyes were still wet, still open, but motionless and unblinking as his pace tapered off, and one more warm orgasm rolled through me like the last lapping wave of high tide.

Lucius kissed me again. He was tender, I think, though not terribly gentle. I'm not certain I ever remember him being gentle. Still, our lips lingered there, sparring, dancing, struggling against one another. He took his fill of me, and I of him, drinking him in until I started to drown. I died all over again when he tore his lips away from mine, this time in genuine agony, as I felt him tear the rest of himself free from me as well.

His body fell heavily beside mine. For a time, we were silent, his hand massaging my thigh as we gazed together toward the ceiling. I turned, watching his chest rise and fall, rapid at first, then more measured, more slow. His skin glistened, slick with fresh perspiration. Like clear autumn rain, his scent was earthy and clean. I might have bottled that aroma, distilling at once a true aphrodisiac and a truly deadly poison. He turned to face me. My skin was so flushed beneath his stare, I could almost feel it tingle and crawl. I strained one final time against my bonds and, at last, laying a still half-breathless kiss on my lips, Lucius slid loose the leather straps on my chest.

He smirked down at me. "That's seven," he announced.

* * *

 **Hope you all enjoyed this update as much as Hermione did (if it were possible) :D**

 **Until next time,**

 **Lana**


	8. Chapter 8

I flushed even deeper and made a meager attempt to hide my face.

 _Not possible._ My jaw locked. _Seven times? Seven times in a row?_

Two months ago, I honestly hadn't known my body was capable of climaxing more than once or twice per night. It only took a twitch of my thighs, though, to convince me that his tally was, if anything, too conservative. The soreness cut through me, and I whimpered sharply through my teeth.

"Don't move." Lucius stayed me, wrapping his arms around my waist, and unlaced the ribbon from my wrists. "You'll feel weak for a while. It will pass." He drew my hands into his, stroking them softly. "Until it does, I want you to rest."

I nodded equivocally and closed my eyes. Had I tried to stand up, I think the chances were good that I'd actually shatter. Even so, I'll hand it to him — I don't believe I'd ever felt more physically battered and broken in my life. He kneaded a little lower, following each of my fingers to the palm.

I murmured sleepily, "That feels good."

"Your hands may tingle for a while. It's a mild ischemic injury, but massaging will help." His eyes flashed as he leveled his gaze. "I'd be glad to give your breasts the same treatment, Miss Granger, but I suspect you'd stab me in the throat if I tried."

 _How right you are, sir._

I giggled timidly, blushing as he switched hands and worked his way over each finger down to my palm. His thumbs reached the marks on my wrists, and I felt a warm, errant tear escape my eye and trickle its way to my temple.

"What is it, Hermione?" Lucius lifted my chin to face him. "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing, really. I promise." I wiped my eyes, embarrassed. "It's just...tonight was a lot of firsts for me."

He nodded darkly, and ran a strand of hair behind my ear, "Yes. I imagine it was."

"Is this," I laid my cheek once more against his chest, "how it'll be from now on?"

Lucius stroked my shoulder. "It could be. Does that frighten you?"

"No," I shook my head, shedding another clear, incongruous tear. "It doesn't. But it's a lot all at once." I swallowed. "It's overwhelming, Lucius."

He dropped his voice low and pulled me in closer. "I doubt it helps at all, Hermione, but perhaps you should know, you nearly overwhelmed me tonight too."

I narrowed my eyes, enormously unconvinced. "Excuse me?"

He sighed. "I don't normally allow a woman to use her mouth on me."

My brow creased. "You're not serious, right?"

"But I am."

My mouth fell open and, with tears still glistening in my eyes, I had to catch myself to keep from laughing _._ What he was telling me didn't make any sense. More than half the frescoes surviving at Pompeii could testify to it — for two thousand years at least, man's main mission in life has been to not get incinerated by a volcano between blow jobs.

"May I ask why?"

Lucius took his time before answering, stroking my hair and glaring up at the shadows shrouding the ceiling. "I could intellectualize it, if you like. I could tell you that the Romans had two words for oral stimulation of the phallus—'fellatio', in which the man receiving is submissive, and 'irrumatio', in which the submissive is the one on her knees. I could tell you that prior to tonight, I've only been capable of enjoying the latter." He paused and ran a hand roughly along his jaw. "But either way, I know of no position more vulnerable for a man than with his cock caught between someone's teeth. It should hardly surprise you, Hermione, I seldom allow myself to be made vulnerable."

I shivered a little and furrowed my brow. "That's very strange, Lucius."

"Yes. Perhaps I have a trust issue or two. Can you imagine what that's like?" He squeezed my shoulder.

I hid my face from him once more, intimidated, but unwilling to take the bait.

"I'm not sure you understand how relieved I was to come back, and find that you hadn't fled," he said in low voice. I felt him run his fingers up my spine, and over the nape of my neck. "I thought I'd driven you off for good this time."

"Honestly, you nearly did," I confessed. "Yesterday, when you didn't call—" I scowled, "I was going to leave tonight. I really was."

"I'm glad that you didn't."

My frown softened, but didn't disappear. "Just what were you doing over there anyways?"

He drew his mouth to one side. "You really want to know? It may bore us both to tears, Miss Granger."

"I don't care," I recalled how furious I'd been with him just a handful of hours prior and felt my blood begin to simmer. "I need to know. I need to know what kept away you from me."

He sat up at edge of the bed. "I was settling some contracts with the Antwerp jewel bank. We will start distributing on the Continent this spring."

"Pearl bank?" I raised my brow, involuntarily admiring the musculature of his shoulders. "That can't be what it sounds like."

"It is, more or less." Lucius stood up, still nude, and strode over toward the door, stepping over the telltale trail of our castaway clothing. "But the people I met with — they were accustomed to a more leisurely pace of doing business than I was prepared to tolerate." He turned back to me. "I wound up buying the bank just to move the project along."

"You ... bought a bank?"

"I had to." He shrugged and slid open the door.

His trunk sat past the threshold and, with a blush, I realized that the house-elf must have left them there in the midst of our tryst. I crossed my arms self-consciously.

"Had we done things their way, I'd still be stuck in Antwerp. It might've taken me the rest of the month."

Discreetly, I straightened to get a better look at his backside as he bent over and brought the baggage inside.

"Be flattered, my darling. I wasn't willing to stay away from you for that long."

My teeth sank into my cheek. "You expect me to believe you bought a Dutch bank, just so you could get home early, and fuck me?"

"Not at all. I bought a Dutch bank because I lack patience for the posturing and tedium of international trade and finance." He cocked his head at me and smirked. "And so I could get home early and fuck you."

I felt a chill travel down my back, terminating with a warm tingle in the tips of each of my fingers.

"I bought something else while I was there." Lucius stepped closer, lighting the sconces with a flick of his hand. "Something for you."

"You shouldn't have." I turned my eyes back to the blanket, hiding them from the light. Those pink pearls were enough. "Seriously. I wish that you hadn't."

"Why? Does it make you feel shallow, Hermione? Letting your lover lavish gifts upon you?"

I nodded without looking up.

"Was I not clear enough when I told you that whores do nothing for me?" He moved slowly to the foot of the bed, dragging his fingertips along my thigh and calf. "You, my dear — you do more for me than you can possibly imagine." He squeezed my ankle. "Ergo, Hermione Granger is no whore. And this is but a meager expression of my infatuation with her."

 _You're logic is flawless, Mr. Malfoy. You also thought having me suck your cock would do nothing for you._ I squirmed. _Shows what you know._ He released me and opened his trunk.

"The man who sold these to me," he said, "told an absurdly apocryphal story. But it made me think of you, and that was reason enough to pay him."

Recovering, I raised my head slightly and propped myself up on my elbows. "What was the story?"

Lucius cocked his head, still glaring down at me darkly. "He told me his family has been making jewelry in Antwerp for ten generations. He told me they carved out a niche for themselves in the diamond district, importing Bahraini pearls instead of gemstones. And he told me that in the spring of 1616, his ancestor sold a pair of pearl earrings to a Dutch silk-worker — one Reijnier Janzoon, alias Vos, alias Vermeer — as wedding gift for his lovely young bride-to-be."

I admit, I was only half-listening. The light from the sconces cast a distracting chiaroscuro across his abdominals and his chest, leaving the long, smooth 'V' between his hips alluringly obscured by shadow. I bit my lip, following that capital letter down to its dark and inverted apex. I'm sure he realized I was leering. Lucius let me, and reached into the trunk and pulled out a small wooden box.

"He swore to me, on pain of death and the grave of his mother, mind you, that these," Lucius shook the box, and sank down beside me on the bed, "were gathered from the very same shoals. That they were polished and set in the very same atelier."

Lucius opened it, revealing a dangling pair of baroque pearls - cloud white and impossibly lustrous. They were modern miniatures of those mysterious earrings in Jan Vermeer's most infamous portrait. I put a hand to my mouth, mesmerized by the dazzling sheen of the nacre.

"They're beautiful," I whispered and raised my eyes, amazed. "You don't suppose any of is true, do you?"

"I don't." He laid the box in my lap. "But I think every pretty pair of ears deserves a pair of pretty pearl earrings." His tone dropped low as he stroked my thigh. "Put them on."

I hesitated a moment, my hands trembling a little as they took hold of the box. I sat up slowly, drawing my knees to my chest, and slid each silver hook through the delicate lobes of my ears. His eyes never left me for a moment. I felt the weight of them dangling there, two pearlescent pendulums. I blushed at the cross-hatchings the ribbon had left imprinted on my skin, like a pair of ruby bracelets around my wrists. But for those few ornamentations, I was still, like him, entirely naked.

I looked up, smiling sheepishly, turning my head from side-to-side. "Well?"

He bared his teeth, "Go on. Give me the pose."

 _The pose?_

Blushing furiously, I obeyed. I widened my eyes and parted my lips. I spun to one side, tilting my head for him in the most faithful tableau vivant I could render. He reached out, stroking his thumb along the curve of my ear and down along the edge of my neck. Like a wheal and flare, I could feel my skin burn beneath his touch.

I breathed in softly, suffering beneath his silent gaze. "Is it a true likeness, Mr. Malfoy?"

He took his hand away. "No. No, I'm afraid not." He drew me closer and kissed my throat. "You're entirely too lovely for Dutch Renaissance, my dear."

I sighed, still flushing as he wrapped me once more in his arms and leaned us back against the headboard, our legs and torsos intertwined.

I trembled a little as I heard him whisper, "Would that I could hang you on my wall, Hermione. I would trade every painting I own."

I turned my eyes toward the ceiling, simpering shyly. I tried to take it for the compliment that he intended, and just ignore its more ominous overtones. I hadn't really noticed until he said it, but strangely enough, the walls of his bedroom were completely barren. But then again, I suppose there wasn't much wall space there to begin with. The room was a square, and somewhat modest in size, with a pitched ceiling and three walls shrouded floor-to-ceiling by curtains of slate grey silk. Relative to rest of the house, even the furnishings were oddly spartan and austere. It's only true touches of warmth were the pale blanket on which we were reclined and a large chandelier above the bed. He caught me staring, lost in thought, and clasped his hand over my shoulder.

"Something troubling you?"

I shook my head, still gazing around at our cell-like surroundings.

"I was just thinking," I whispered, "This house is so opulent. I guess the master just isn't quite what I imagined."

He nodded. "It's not the master."

I glanced back at him and narrowed my eyes, "But you said this was—"

"After my divorce," he cut me off coolly, "I moved myself up here."

My brow creased as he tucked another curl behind my ear and batted lightly at my earring. "There's not another room in the house with such a view."

Lucius said an incantation under his breath, and I gasped softly as all three sets of curtains drew open around us, giving out upon the twinkling city below, the cold Tiber snaking along old Rome.

"This isn't real," I mumbled, shivering again, and shook my head, resting my cheek against his chest. "None of this is. I'm just dreaming, aren't I?"

"We both are," he walked his fingertips down between my shoulder blades, "but some dreams pan out better than others."

I shuddered violently, and my teeth started to chatter.

Lucius tightened his hold. "You're freezing, aren't you?"

I nestled closer, my entire body beginning to tremble.

"A little, with the windows open," I spoke quietly, my lips brushing over the smooth, bare skin over his sternum. "But please, don't close them. I'd like to keep looking."

He nodded and, without a word, scooped me up in his arms, sliding the blanket out from underneath us. Lucius held it out for me. I didn't entirely believe that he wanted me to spend the whole night at his side; we never shared a bed for the whole night before.

I slipped underneath, settling once more into his embrace. Against the grain, he slid his hand along the blanket overlying my thigh, and we gazed together out across the Eternal City. My eyelids began to grow heavy, but I fought them back. I wasn't ready. I wasn't willing to let that night go just yet. I felt so at home here — so safe and so cherished. I think I might've traded an entire year of my life for just one extra hour in his arms. In time though, it was inevitable. Surrounded by sparkling lights, exhaustion slowly mastered me, and I drifted off into a deep sleep.

 _Please..._ I'm not sure whether I was thinking, dreaming, or both. _Please. Don't leave me alone again. Not ever. Lucius. I'll do anything. Whatever you ask..._

It was still dark out when I awoke and, for a few fearful moments, I thought for certain that the entire ordeal with him had been some elaborate and illusory dream. I was back in my own bed in my room, wearing a silky white slip. My breath was shallow as my whole body tensed up.

 _Did he... Did he dress me?_

I touched my ears. The pearls were missing. _Did_ _he take them out?_

It just wasn't possible. It wasn't. However tired I might have been, he could not have carried me all the way to my room, and readied me for bed without waking me, without causing so much as a stir.

 _It's true then, isn't it?_

A bolt of panic shot through me. Then I tried to move, and a hair-raising ache split through the muscles of my hips, and arms, and thighs. I yelped, and curled up onto my side. My body was on fire. It hurt — it hurt badly — but I liked it. I cherished it. It meant what had happened was real. All that he'd put me through, all that he'd done to me. _Everything._ I'd survived it.

 _And he carried me, didn't he? He carried me down here, like a sleeping child._

I suppose it should have stung that he didn't let me stay, but the warm, throbbing euphoria I felt was enough to dissolve any residual bitterness. Outside, the clouds cleared for a moment, and I could see the pearl earrings glinting in the moonlight on my bedside table. My lips parted, and my eyes fluttered shut. I breathed a soft and silent sigh of disbelief, of serene and somnolent ecstasy, and slipped once more under a veil of sleep.

* * *

 **Thank you all so much for reading and sharing your thoughts. More to come soon.**

 **Hugs,**

 **Lana**


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